23 Adult Education
by Thescarredman
Summary: Kat learns how rocky the road to love can be, especially for a Gen dating a Keeper on her pickup team.
1. Kat's First Date

Saturday September 16 2006  
Escondido

_I feel like a kid on Prom Night,_ Daniel thought. He was sitting at a table for four at Shannon's, the poshest restaurant in town that would accept a reservation for Saturday night. Only after he'd given his name to the reservationist and hung up did he realize he couldn't possibly scrape up the cash for the night; until he started drawing paychecks from IO, he was living on his savings, and the budget wouldn't stretch to finance a night at Shannon's.

Before calling back to cancel, he'd hit his dad up for a loan. He hadn't had much hope; Dad was a thrifty man who had never fronted his kids money for frivolities or entertainment. He was shocked when his father had reached into his wallet and given him three times what he'd asked for. "Not a loan, a gift. I can't think of a better way to celebrate your divorce than by throwing you a party."

He'd arrived thirty minutes early, to make sure the reservation hadn't been screwed up, and had been offered a choice of tables by the maitre d'. He'd thought Kat might prefer extra room, so he'd chosen a large one far from the door. He'd checked his watch seven times in twenty minutes, afraid she'd have trouble finding the place, or change her mind. She'd insisted on meeting him, rather than letting him pick her up. It wasn't him in particular, he was sure; but she wouldn't let him find out where she and her family lived, any more than Annie would tell his father. He couldn't fault her for it, but the wait was excruciating. He restrained himself from calling.

"Sir. Your guest." The maitre d' had brought her to the table himself.

He stood, took a shallow breath, and said, "Yow."

She smiled. "Is that good?"

"'Good.' Not the word that comes to mind. I'm going to have to look up 'ravishing' in the dictionary, though; I don't really know what it means." He swallowed. "You look different. Great, but different. It's your makeup." _Dope. Guys aren't supposed to notice a girl's makeup; we're supposed to pretend they just look like that all the time._

But she beamed at him. "Face courtesy of my baby sister. She insisted." She gestured with a strapless purse hardly big enough for a paperback. "My regular style's pretty basic. All the makeup I own fits in here."

He appraised the work. _Little sister is an artist. _Somehow the application made her more mature without aging her, and drew his attention to her face and away from the rest of her; something else he'd been worrying about.

She was wearing a Little Black Dress with a flared hem that ended a hand's width above the knee. It was snug on her hips and torso but not skintight, and the top part gathered at her neck, leaving only her shoulders bare. The coverage was modest, the style conservative, and the effect was sexy as hell. Her hair and eyes shone as if they were lit from within. Without any thought of flattering her, he said, "You belong on a runway."

She colored a little at that, and the maitre d' offered to seat her. In fact, the man seemed reluctant to leave. As he pushed her chair in, he smiled across the table and mouthed, "Wow," before he left._ Prom Night, definitely. And against all odds, I scored a date with the homecoming queen, class valedictorian, and captain of the cheerleading squad._

Seated, he noticed, she was only fractionally taller than he was; most of her extra height was in her legs. He tried not to think about all that bare womanflesh under the table. "Any trouble finding the place?" He'd just checked his watch; she was early too.

She shook her head, sending the faintest trace of perfume his way. "No. My car's got one of those map thingies. You tell it where you want to go, and if you make a wrong turn, it growls at you." She glanced around at the décor and the other guests. "I've never been in a restaurant like this. It looks like the sort of place you'd have to wait _weeks_ to get into."

"In L.A maybe; not in Escondido. They get a lot of cancellations here."

A server arrived to take drink orders. Neither of them ordered alcohol: raspberry iced tea for her, regular for him. "I don't suppose I need to ask, but how's the food?"

"I don't know. Never been here either." He grinned. "I just hope I haven't brought you to one of those _nouvelle cuisine _places. If they bring you out a plate with a piece of meat you could hide under a coffee cup, and six beans arranged _so_ artistically on the plate, and a tablespoon of sauce … they might have to arrest me."

She put two fingers to her mouth, smiling. "I'll break you out."

That made him think of last night, and the story she'd told. _Not gonna bring that up, not tonight._ "So, if you can lift refrigerators like egg cartons already, how come you bother to work out? Not that it doesn't look great on you," he added quickly.

She glanced down. "Well, like I said, most of this came with the other change. I used to be almost Anna's size. But I have good reasons to work out. One, it's relaxing, almost Zen sometimes. Also, it helps me train my power. I have to consciously restrain it when I'm lifting weights, and keeping my physical strength up gives me some overlap."

"Overlap?" Their drinks arrived, along with the menus. She was silent until the server left.

"Like with the horseshoes. It kicks in all by itself when I need it. If I can curl sixty pounds with muscle power, I'm less likely to heft a heavy bag of groceries out of the cart and send it halfway across the lot by accident. I won't have the strength to lift a car until I _need_ to lift a car."

_Lift a car? _"O-kay. I suppose you spend a lot of time thinking about how to stay under the radar."

She lifted her tea. "You never know who's watching you."

"Speaking of which. I'm getting on a plane to Denver tomorrow afternoon. I'd love you to be at the airport to send me off, but I don't think it's a good idea." He decided against a boyish smile, and kept a straight face. "If you're so inclined, you'll have to kiss me goodbye tonight." He hid his pleasure at the touch of color that appeared high on her cheeks. _Never had a girlfriend who blushed so easily._

Then her gaze shifted from his face, focusing on something just over his shoulder. Before he could turn, a woman's voice said, "Danny. I didn't know you came here."

He didn't turn. Neutrally, he said, "Hello, Adrienne. We've never been here before." _And if I'd known you came here, I would never have made the reservation._

"I come here quite often. I know the owner."

_You know a lot of guys, Adrienne. One too many. That's why we're divorcing._

She came around to stand between them, wineglass in hand, unconsciously posing - or maybe not unconsciously. Exactly his height dressed up in her usual four-inch heels, she looked down on them with a polite smile. Trim figure, except for the implants; she was a treadmill tart. Expensive clothes and jewelry; she'd always made more money than him, between the modeling fees and the cash the slobbering creeps shoved down her thong at the clubs where she danced. Tawny shoulder-length hair with lighter frosting, perfectly done up; hazel eyes. An altogether stunning package, and if she'd been sitting alone, most of the solitary men in the place would have been sizing her up and sending her drinks.

But his soon-to-be-ex came off a clear second standing next to his date. Only six years separated them, but they'd been hard years. Caitlin was a dewy, beautiful bud just opening; Adrienne was a hothouse rose with darkening petals. Or so it seemed to him; he knew what lay under the skins of both women.

Adrienne glanced at Kat, then at him; after five years of marriage and a couple hundred fights, he knew what she was thinking, as clear as if she was speaking the words aloud. _For all the contempt you show me now, your taste in women hasn't changed any. _"Danny, aren't you going to introduce me?"

He sighed. "Caitlin, this is my ex, Adrienne."

"Not for a week or so, Danny. Don't jump the gun."

Kat gave each of them a quick glance. "Pleased to meet you, Adrienne. Call me Kat, almost everybody does."

"Where's Alan tonight?" _Cheating on him already?_

"On his way. He's running late – press of business and all that. Sometimes I wonder how the place runs without him."

A server approached with a tray bearing a full wineglass just like the one in Adrienne's hand. "Compliments of the gentleman at the bar."

Adrienne's mouth thinned, but it was him she was looking at, waiting for a comment. He gave the tiniest shrug. _None of my business anymore._

"Adrienne," Kat said, "sit with us until Alan gets here." They had water glasses as well as their drinks; she set hers in front of the chair opposite where Adrienne was standing. "If we look like a foursome, it might keep some of the sharks from circling."

His ex blinked at the unexpected kindness. She glanced at him; he shrugged with his eyebrows. _I'd rather be caught in a crossfire in Sadr City._

As she sat, Kat said to her, "I see where Drew gets his good looks. Not that Daniel's not handsome," she amended, smiling at him, "but Drew's a different kind of good-looking; he's going to be girl-pretty."

Adrienne lifted an eyebrow at him. _So, this one's sharing our house already?_

"She saw him at Dad's house," he explained. "Her stepmom and Dad are old friends."

Kat said cautiously, "I think they each invited a chaperone, and it turned into a blind date, sort of."

Adrienne smiled indulgently. "You must have made a good impression on each other; here you are again. What do you do for a living, Kat?"

"Nothing yet. I'm still in school."

"Ah. Modeling academy?"

Kat sipped her drink. "I'll take that as a compliment. No. I'm postgrad at the Institute. Computer Science major. The course load is crushing; I'd never have time for a full-time job."

His ex gave him another glance._ She's twenty-one, twenty-three maybe? A little young, don't you think?_ "If money for school is getting tight, I'll bet I could get you a part-time job where I work, Kat," she purred. "You'd have to be willing to give up your weekends, but I'm sure you could bring home five hundred a week with maybe twenty hours' easy work. I'd be glad to give you all the training you need."

_Now_, Dan thought,_ would be a good time to slide under the table and disappear._

"Oh, I've already got a part-time job on my career track. Got recruited at the end of my sophomore year. I can't say too much about it, though. Topkick Security has ties to some agency in the Department of Homeland Security." She sipped her tea. "But it's a good gig. They pay me forty thousand a year, for work that hardly amounts to an extra homework assignment. Plus a company car." She looked at him. "You've seen it."

_The one with the stealth-fighter paint job. Now it makes sense._ He was glad of the excuse to smile; the look on Adrienne's face was priceless. "_Very_ nice. Doesn't really seem like a girl car, but I bet it cost beaucoup bucks."

"They've got the money. The Director says I can come to work full-time tomorrow, if I want, at three times what he's paying me now – which means I could demand _five_ times if I play hard-to-get; the demand is _unbelievable_. But I don't want to spend the next ten years hacker-proofing DOD software." She put three fingers to her lips. "Oops. Probably shouldn't have said that, guys. Don't tell anyone."

"So," Adrienne said slowly, "If two hundred kay a year doesn't interest you … what are you planning to do with your education?"

"Something _big_," she replied, with another sip of her tea. "Just lately, I've gotten interested in artificial intelligence, robotics. The field's already a greyhound race, and the tech turns over almost every year. But I think I see some breakthroughs on the horizon that will constitute a quantum leap in the applications end, real human-grade AI."

"I'm _very_ sorry I asked," Adrienne said. "Kat, could you say that in English?"

"Ha. Sure. Sometime in the next few years, computers are suddenly going to get a _lot _smarter … and start thinking like people." Her glass was empty; she pushed it away. "It's software, mostly. We already build computers to human-level specs, at least all the ones we know about. For a while, the theory was that all you'd have to do was make 'em big enough, and they'd think for themselves automatically. Wrong. Turns out human thought processes are pretty complex for the hardware they utilize. The biggest challenge is figuring out how _people_ think, so you can develop an analogue to duplicate it. But people don't understand themselves very well at all, so a machine intelligence would have to be capable of teaching _itself_ about people, because to imitate us, it would have to know us better than we know ourselves." She stopped and looked at her two listeners and shook her head. "Now you know why I never get a second date, Daniel. Don't get me talking shop. Adrienne, what kind of part-time work nets twenty-five dollars an hour with only on-the-job training?"

More subdued than he'd ever seen her, Adrienne said, "Dancing."

"Dance instruction pays that well?"

"No. I'm a dancer. At clubs mostly, but I sometimes do private parties."

"Ah," his date said, nodding at his ex. "I should've guessed."

"Oh?" Adrienne lowered her eyelids, ready for a catfight after all.

"You've got a dancer's poise, just like my sister. You both just _glide_ from place to place. I saw it when you came up behind Daniel. When _I_ get on the dance floor, the ground shakes."

"Oh," she said, friendly again. He shifted in his seat. _When she first showed up, I was afraid they'd fistfight in the dining room. Now I'm even more afraid they're going to be girlfriends._ "I model too, but club dancing is my bread and butter."

"Modeling what? I'm _sure_ I've never seen your picture."

"Ah, nothing much. In men's magazines, mostly."

His date's eyes widened. "I'm sure I'd never have the courage." Kat glanced around the room; it seemed as if a man was stealing glances at their group from every third table. "How often does someone ask you for an autograph?"

Adrienne laughed. "All the time," she said, "and you wouldn't _believe _some of the things they want me to write on."

For fifteen minutes, he sat between the two most beautiful women he'd ever known, feeling like a fifth wheel on his own date, while they chatted about the ins and outs of life as a showgirl and a softcore model, oblivious to his mounting unease. Finally, Kat rested her chin in her hand and said, "I'd love to see you dance. It'd make a _great_ girls' night out. Roxy and Anna would take notes. Sarah … well, you never know with Sarah, but I bet she'd have a good time. What's your schedule look like for this week?"

"You really mean that?" Adrienne's voice was pitched low, the way she might talk to a guy alone. _Why not? Kat's been flattering her as if she was her date._

"The women in my family are eccentric, Adrienne. If they meet you before you start work, they'll have a _ball_ watching you make strange men drool on themselves. And," she added in a different tone of voice, "I know someone who used to dance. It makes me wonder what the life is like."

"Girlfriend?"

"Plural. Classmates."

He couldn't stand it any longer. "Adrienne, are you sure Alan's got the right restaurant?"

Caitlin's eyes widened, looking at him. "Good grief, we've been going on like you're not even _here_." She laid a hand over his. "I'm going to have to find a way to make it up to you."

The touch of her hand seemed to steal his senses, and for a moment he forgot Adrienne was sharing the table. "Shouldn't be hard," he said dizzily.

"Kat," Adrienne said, "would you think I'm being rude if I asked you to give me a few minutes alone with my husband?"

"No problem." Kat pushed back her chair.

He said, "Kat, stop." He turned to his ex. "Adrienne, Caitlin's my guest, not you. You don't order her away from the table. Kat, if you get up, I'm leaving too."

"Um, Daniel, actually, I was about to excuse myself. I've been chugging liquids like a Saint Bernard all afternoon, and this is the longest I've gone all day without a visit to the little girls' room."

"Well … what if the waiter comes to take our order? You haven't looked at the menu."

She held his eyes. "Order for both of us. Anything you've got a taste for will be fine with me."

They both watched her leave until she was out of earshot. Adrienne cocked an eye at him. "Those legs do go _all_ the way up, don't they? Do I discern a double entendre?"

"You do _not_. We're parting company before midnight, and I'm not sure I'll even get a kiss. What's on your mind?"

"I called Drew's daycare yesterday. They wouldn't even tell me if he was there. Your doing?"

"Adrienne, I'm not going to be a prick about visitation. But I'm not going to let you pick him up from school and disappear hours before I know he's gone. That's just the way it is."

"I wouldn't have done that."

"I don't think you would, either. Now I _know_ you won't." He added, "This couldn't have been taken care of with a phone call?"

"You're just as bad at keeping your cellphone turned on as ever. And you haven't been answering the phone at home."

"I've been at my dad's a lot," he admitted.

"And I'm _not_ going to call your father's house looking for you."

"He'd be polite."

"_I_ wouldn't be. Your lawyer was _his_ recommendation, wasn't she?"

"We told it straight in court. I got Drew without trashing your ability to parent. I know he loves you, and I'm not going to sabotage that. Hell, he even likes Alan."

"You didn't _have_ to cast aspersions on my motherhood skills. All you had to do was get the case in front of a bluenose judge and show him my centerfold spreads."

Their voices had begun to climb; he deliberately lowered his. "I didn't Photoshop those pictures, Adrienne. They're real. They're on fan sites all over the Web. And you're still churning out new ones for your subscription service. Even if I managed to block it all off the computer, someday he's going to be in his buddy's garage, and they'll happen across a stack of his dad's Playboys."

Her voice dropped as well. "You hypocrite. Don't tell _me_ you never pointed out those pictures to one of your … gun-buddies and said, 'I'm doing that.'"

He flushed. "This isn't about me. Kids are cruel. You never used your married name in your career, thank God, but if you were waiting at the door when he came home from school with his friends, or going to the PTA meetings, it wouldn't take long for someone to recognize you, and word to spread."

She seemed about to say something else, but changed her mind. "It's done now. The papers will be ready this week. You keep your word about letting me have him, Danny. Do that, and I won't make any trouble for you. Chase all the redheaded naïfs you can find." She stood up.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to say goodbye to Caitlin. Then I'm going to call Alan and tell him to forget it if he's not on his way."

"Adrienne-"

"Don't worry," she flung at him as she reached down for her purse. "I'll let her make up her own mind about you. Innocent or not, I think she's smart enough to catch on to you before you can do her any harm."

...

Caitlin stood at one of the sinks in the ladies' room, washing her hands and waiting for Adrienne to show up. The woman had so obviously wanted to talk to her alone, Caitlin had expected her to be stepping on her heels as she entered the bathroom. _Must be some talk they're having at the table._ She would have liked to splash some water on her face, but she knew any damage she did to Roxy's makeup job would be beyond her skill to repair._ I wonder how long it would take her to teach me how to do this._ She was just reaching for her purse when Adrienne came through the door.

Daniel's ex walked straight to the sinks and reached for a paper towel. She wiped quickly at her eyes as if something were in them. "Got a mascara?"

"Sort of." She fished it out and handed it over. "It doesn't do much."

Adrienne glanced at her face, and applied the brush. "Jesus. What _is_ this? They're getting _thinner_."

"Sorry. It's just color, really. My lashes are already plenty thick. But if I don't darken them, they're almost transparent." She saw Adrienne looking at her in the mirror.

"Kat, I'm not a jealous woman looking for dirt. I never thought that copper hair came out of a bottle. Although," she added with a smile, "I did have some professional interest in the name of your surgeon."

"Dr. Puberty." She got out a brush and ran it quickly through her hair.

"Well. High school must have been a roller coaster ride."

"Not as rough as it could have been; I was a late bloomer." She put the brush back in her purse. "My looks aren't a handicap at my job. I telecommute, mostly, and most of my face time is with my boss, who respects me for my work – and he's _very_ married. If I go into management, I may need to have a reduction, at least if I want to break six figures."

Adrienne smiled. "And wear mud-brown contacts."

She smiled back. "And maybe some gray tint in my hair."

After the chuckles subsided, she said, "Adrienne … what happened?"

The other woman's brows knitted. "What?"

"You love a guy enough to marry him, probably picked him out of a herd of suitors; you want his child. Looks like you're set for life. Five years later, you're sleeping with someone else. How does that happen? I like Daniel, but I'm sure I don't know him. I know I shouldn't be asking, but I'm way out of my depth here." Softly, she said, "Help me. Please."_ Just hope she's objective enough to avoid a diatribe._

The woman was silent for several seconds. Then she said, "There's a club I work on weekends. Arena's, in San Diego. Tomorrow after eight is Amateur Night. I won't be on stage, but I'll be there, mingling with the customers. If you're serious, come see me and we'll talk." She gave Caitlin a peck on the cheek as she walked out.

Caitlin returned to the table. Daniel was sitting alone, and the waiter was just picking up Adrienne's wineglasses. "Where's Adrienne? Did Alan show up?"

He studied her face, but not in the way she was getting used to. "She left. Didn't you talk to her?"

"Yes, but she didn't say anything about leaving." She sat, and noticed the menus were gone as well. "You ordered?"

"Sort of." He grinned. "I told him 'one of everything.'"

"You _didn't_."

"Wait and see." His face smoothed out. "So what _did_ you talk about?"

"Work, mostly. She seems fascinated by the idea of a well-paying job where good looks are a potential handicap."

He relaxed a little. "I suppose it _would _be a foreign concept. Have to say, you two seemed to get along."

She shook her head. "As soon as I saw her coming, I thought she wanted to make trouble." _But I changed my mind after five minutes' conversation. Or maybe she did._ "I thought schmoozing her might pull her fangs." She took a sip from her refilled glass.

"So you're not going to watch her dance?" _Something in his voice…_

"No," she said firmly. "And she never did give me her schedule for next week, you'll notice." _I haven't even kissed him yet, and I'm lying to him already. Unless I can get some tips on dealing with him from the woman who's divorcing him, this relationship is doomed. _"What movie are we going to see?"

15


	2. Amateur Night

Sunday September 17 2006  
San Diego

"Caitlin," Sarah said doubtfully, "Do you really think this is going to be _fun_?"

The four women of the Lynch household were cruising through the parking lot at Arena's just before eight o'clock, looking for an empty slot. The blacktop was packed. Almost every space was taken, mostly by SUVs and sports cars, and a few limos idled in the aisles, blocking traffic. Men, mostly in their twenties and thirties, were milling around the lot like it was a tailgate party. Many of them stared into the windows of the minivan as if it were a display case.

"I don't know," Caitlin replied, turning the vehicle down another aisle. "But it should be educational."

A bouncer type in a neon safety vest stepped in front of them, and she brought the vehicle to a stop. He put his face close to the driver's window and spoke through the glass, clearly expecting Kat to leave it up. "Dancers' lot is over there, by the entrance." He waved towards a chained-off section of the lot near the door, accessible past two more Security types; the space appeared to be about a third empty.

"Um, we're not contestants. We're just here to see a friend."

The guard looked around the lot at the men drifting through the aisles; some were migrating their way. "I won't tell. You don't register till you're inside, and nobody checks." He spoke into a small handheld radio, waved to catch the attention of the reserved-lot guards, and then pointed at the van. "Go on. Safer for everybody this way."

"Thanks." She rolled the van inside the chains and parked. As they got out, they saw that the entire crowd was headed for the door after them. She was a little uneasy until she checked her watch: just a few minutes before eight, showtime.

Sarah said, "This isn't what I expected. I thought I was used to having men stare at me, but this is different." They joined a short line at the door, which suddenly got longer as all the men in the lot started filing in behind them. There was nothing sinister or threatening in their behavior; many of them were staring openly at the four girls, but there were also plenty of chuckles and good humor mixed with the shameless scrutiny. It made her glad she'd been especially firm with Roxanne and Sarah about modest dress.

"It certainly is," Anna said, smiling as she scanned the lot. "You may be used to the stares of men who _imagine_ you naked, but these guys actually have some _expectations_."

As soon as they passed through the door, the music thrummed out at them: heavy bass and a breathy female vocalist apparently trying to sing in the middle of an orgasm. The entrance opened onto a short hall, with a window in one wall near the door where an older man was seated, taking money. "No cover for dancers," he said, as Caitlin opened her purse.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "No pun intended?"

"Register here." He pushed a clipboard through the window.

"We're not here to dance. We're patrons." Kat added up the cover for all four of them, and passed the money through.

He laid his hand over the money, and her hand, and looked them over. "If you change your mind, you can come back any time before the end of the contest. I'll make sure you get a refund. Right now, I need to see ID on all of you." She and Anna showed him their expert forgeries. Then he gestured for Sarah's, but she wasn't paying attention.

"Sarah?"

"Hmm?" Sarah was staring down the short hallway into the club proper, where the professional dancers were moving among the tables in various states of undress. She wet her lips.

"Sarah." Anna leveled a look at her: no mean feat, considering the six-inch height difference. "Bobby, love of your life, remember?"

"Forevermore. But it doesn't hurt to look, right?"

Roxy handed hers over last. He gave her a sharp look, and then examined the ID carefully. "I'll be right back."

Roxy opened her mouth, but Anna shushed her with a gesture. "Wait. What are you doing?"

"She looks a little young. I'm just gonna make a copy of this. If the licensing people come in here, I need proof we checked your ID."

The special encoding on the licenses would spoof any electronic inquiry, but a photocopy would show the ID as it really appeared, with Roxy's face and real name. _We can't leave tracks like that anywhere._

"No, you don't," Anna said, loud enough for everyone in line to hear. "They can just ask _her_ to show ID, and you're in the clear. You can't make a copy of it without her permission. It's a violation of federal law. It's got her address on it. It's got her _Social Security_ number on it, for crying out loud." She looked behind her at the line. "People are getting nervous. If they think you might make a paper copy of _their_ ID, you might lose some customers."

He shoved the card back at Anna. "Just trying to keep the minors outside."

"Understood." Anna gave Kat's sister back her license. "Check them all you like. If you see one that looks suspicious, I'm sure there are undercover cops in here who can run it for you."

As they walked down the hallway, Anna said, "He's calling someone." Her voice deepened into a fair imitation of the doorman's. "'Rock. See those four dykes comin in? Look like trouble. One of you keep an eye on them.'"

Sarah's eyelids drooped dangerously.

"Fun, Sarah, remember?"

"Certainly."

They paused at the end of the hall and surveyed the scene. The main room was a glittering space lit mostly with spots. At the back wall, she saw a small stage with a doorway opening somewhere in the back; a runway extended from it halfway into the room. The rest of the floor was occupied by tables. A bar lined one side, and bead curtains closed off a row of doorways on the other. Half the tables were filled already, and scantily-clad women were moving among them, filling drink orders and squirming in customers' laps; no one was on stage yet. Dozens of men, and more than a few women, were seated at tables or wandering about, smiling and trading words with the dancers and with each other. The closest of them noticed the four girls and stopped to stare. Like a pond rippling from a thrown stone, the action stilled in a wavefront expanding outward from the four of them. The performers kept dancing, but the patrons stopped watching, turning their heads to stare in the direction of the newcomers.

Roxy said, "Ever seen one of those old Westerns, where the gunslinger pauses at the saloon doors?"

Thumping and shuffling sounds echoed down the hallway as new arrivals piled up behind them. Caitlin could almost feel her backside warming up from the stares. "Sarah," she hissed, "Take it easy. You're pulling in every guy in the place. _Relax_."

"Hon, it's not just her. You're _both_ broadcasting, near full power. Do you need to go to the bathroom, maybe? Splash a little cold water on?"

Sarah put on a smile, tossed her head to bring her raven hair over her shoulder, and touched Kat's hand in a reassuring gesture. "No, no. We'll be fine, shikasin. I just don't like being insulted. I had a tense moment, and she got nervous watching me. There's no trouble. Let's just grab a table, then Caitlin can look for her friend."

The crowd started to settle back down somewhat. Plenty of guys were still staring, but the ones at the tables where the dancers were performing pulled their eyes back to the show. The girls picked out a table on the side of the runway opposite the bar, which was a little less packed. As they sat, Roxy said, "Close call, guys. I thought we were gonna get chased back to our car." She shook her head. "Imagine us running out the door like bank robbers, with a dog pack of tubby guys in football jerseys baying at our heels."

"Kat, you _do_ know how to make an entrance." Adrienne stood at her side, dressed in a floor-length white robe; the garment closed with a single tie at the waist, exposing plenty of leg and cleavage. Clearly visible under the gauzy material, she was wearing something brief and lacy.

Kat introduced everyone. The corner of Adrienne's mouth twitched when she introduced her "stepmother." "_You're _an old friend of Andy's? Was he your crossing guard when you were a kid?"

Anna put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "Close. Base security when I was a kid. He was _always_ on my case, like he was detailed to me or something. But we get along now."

Adriana turned next to Roxanne. "And you're the sister who dances." She looked from Roxanne to Caitlin, comparing. "Not how I imagined you."

"I know," her little sister shrugged. "I'm still hoping. Sis came kind of late to puberty."

"So I've heard." Last, she looked at Sarah. "Do you think you're going to have a good time tonight? Kat wasn't sure."

Sarah gave her a small smile with eyes that didn't stop at Adrienne's face. "If I can't find fun, I'll make my own."

A man appeared a step behind Sarah's chair. He was burly, young, and his clean-cut good looks were totally at odds with her preconceived image of a strip club bouncer; she imagined he could make serious extra money if Arena's had a Ladies' Night. He examined them in a way that was disturbing without being aggressive.

"Tony," Adrienne said, "what are you doing?"

"Rock sent me over. Said to make sure there's no trouble."

Sarah's eyes glittered as she stood. _Uh oh, guess we're leaving._

But when the Apache Princess turned, she widened her eyes, the picture of sincerity, and closed with the big guard until only a hand's width separated them. Caitlin saw the man's Adam's apple bob as he looked down. "That is so _sweet_," Sarah purred, looking up at him. "I'm sure there won't be any trouble while _you're_ here. But we do get a little crabby if we're not properly watered." She tilted her head towards the bar. "Do you think …"

Tony took their drink orders and headed for the bar. "Sit down," Sarah told Adrienne. "I'm going to stand for a while."

"Sarah, what are you doing?"

"Distracting myself. Reminding myself I'm a guy girl now. Having a little harmless fun."

Roxanne said cautiously, "Things going okay with you and Bobby?"

"Oh, things are going _splendidly_. Except that I can't even kiss him with my mouth open unless I'm dead drunk or medicated into a near coma." She glanced at the bar, where Tony was waiting for their drinks. To Caitlin, it seemed Sarah was giving the man's rear end an unusually close examination. "We're making progress, but it's going slower than I ever dreamed, and it's harder than I ever imagined."

"You guys look awful in the morning sometimes."

"It's not just the lack of sleep and feeling sick half the night. I wasn't prepared to be so excruciatingly _horny _all the time. I hadn't thought about the effect of spending every night steeping in sex hormones." She looked around the room. "I'm fantasizing about every woman in the place who gives me a second glance. Even some of the _guys_ are looking good." She watched Tony turn away from the bar. "Here comes one now."

Anna steepled her fingers. "Shikasin, you're about to do something wicked, aren't you?"

Adrienne gave Kat a puzzled look; she shrugged. "It's a long story."

"Bet it'd be worth it." The dancer sat in Sarah's seat, flipping the bottom of the robe over her bare legs. "I'll have to get back out on the floor soon, but I'll come back later." She looked across the table at Caitlin. "Then we'll make time for a little private talk."

Tony returned with a tray bearing two iced teas, a diet cola, and a glass of ice water. "You girls really know how to party." He passed the water to Anna. "You must be the designated driver. Smart precaution. Those ice teas really sneak up on you." Sarah, once again deep inside the guy's personal space, grinned and slapped him lightly on the shoulder; he smiled back uncertainly.

A waitress appeared with a tray, carrying four expensive import beers. "From the fellas at that table over there. See them? The football jerseys?"

Roxanne rolled her eyes.

She said, "Thanks, but send them back."

"Wait," Adrienne said. "Kat, take your own advice. Leave them here, or you'll be sending drinks back all night. You don't have to invite them to join you, and if they come to the table, thank them, but explain that it's a girls-only night. They'll respect that."

"I wouldn't want them following us to our car, looking for payment."

Adrienne shook her head. "Won't happen. One of the reasons I picked this place for my home base instead of a club in L.A." She looked around at the tables. "The crowds at strip clubs are usually better-behaved than at your average sports bar, and this place is better than most. The regulars are polite, and if some new fish tries to touch a girl, or even gets too loud with the comments, the house falls on him. He gets escorted off the property, _all_ the way off the lot, and he doesn't come back. No woman has ever been molested in the club or the lot."

"Wow." Sarah gazed up into Tony's eyes. "I always wondered what it would be like, having a big strong man to protect me." Roxy discreetly stuck two fingers in her mouth for a moment and coughed.

Tony mumbled, "Just my job. We like to see the girls come back."

"The Security guy in the lot had us thinking we might get pulled right out of our car."

"Big guy? Sandy hair cut short?" When she affirmed it, Adrienne said, "That's Connor, the security boss. He likes to put on a show for the girls who come in on Amateur Night. He figures if they think they're doing something a little dangerous, it gets them hot, and they put on a better show."

Roxanne snorted.

"It works, actually. So does encouraging them to take stage names." She grinned at them. "If it's not really _you_ up there, but some exotic alter ego, it reduces your inhibitions. The club has been doing this for a long time, and they know what works. Arena's draws people from three counties on Amateur Night."

"All right," a voice on a PA system said, "Let's get started. Say hello to our first contestant, Mercedes." Brief applause, then a girl appeared on stage from the doorway, somewhat ill at ease in a lacy teddy. A new song began, and she walked up the stage, acting more like a runway model than an exotic dancer. She reached the pole at the end of the runway and snuggled up to it, lifting a leg and rubbing her thigh against it.

The crowd responded with hoots and encouraging calls. "Take it off!" "Shake it, baby." "Use it like you mean it!" She flushed and smiled, and began to gyrate, grinding her pelvis against the pole. "Yeah!"

Roxy said, "How much does she have to take off?"

"Nobody has to strip. This is Amateur Night: you pick your song, get up on stage, and do what you want, and the crowd picks the winner." Adrienne lifted an eyebrow as the girl got on her knees and elbows, shoving her rump into the air as the spectators with the best view howled. "You can even dance in your street clothes. But first prize is a thousand dollars. Most of the girls will be willing to go down to bra and panties to win it. Half of them will flash a nipple, at least, and a couple are sure to go all the way."

The song ended, and another contestant took the stage. The PA announced, "Chantelle, fellas. Anybody who was here last week knows you're in for a treat." "Chantelle" was a leggy and attractive black girl dressed in shorts and a middy top; the "treat" appeared to be the speed at which she shed them. Throughout her song, the girl strutted around the stage in underwear as skimpy as Roxy's, posing and smiling, to the clear delight of the customers.

Roxy said "This isn't dancing. I don't know why they bother with music; they aren't even moving to a _beat_."

Adrienne shrugged. "They're completely untrained, but the crowd's forgiving; anything goes on Amateur Night. Still, if you're an _artiste_, Roxanne, you'd be disappointed at the performances Monday through Saturday." She looked up at the stage as another girl sashayed up the runway, unbuttoning her shirt. "A night at a place like this isn't a night at the ballet." She swung her head around, indicating the crowd. "These guys aren't here to appreciate the girls' technical expertise."

Snort. "Guess not."

"Not what you're thinking, either. I'll bet the prize tonight doesn't go to the girl with the biggest knockers." She grinned. "Or the one who struts out on stage at the start of her number naked as a jaybird. Those aren't the big earners among the pros, either. To be a successful stripper, as a pro or an amateur, you have to realize the _real_ reason men come here."

"Not to look at naked women?"

"See for yourself. How much time is each of the guys looking on stage? Forget the tables where the pros are dancing, for now."

Roxy cast her eyes around the room; Kat looked too, and saw what Adrienne was talking about. At most of the tables where no dancers were working, the men were _acting _like they were watching the show, but they were spending just as much time enjoying each others' company. And a lot of them were casting surreptitious glances at _their_ table, with nothing to see but four modestly dressed women and a dancer on break.

The dancer went on, "What we do here is partly performance art, but it's mostly business. We find a need and make a product to fill it."

Roxanne looked around at the dancers squirming in their customers' laps, and others sitting at tables chatting. "A product? Not a service?"

"No. We're making a fantasy." Adrienne made a hand gesture that included the entire establishment. "A tiny minority of the men who come in here are leering scumbags; they might offer you money, but not for anything you're prepared to give. Another small group of guys are … well, we call them players; they collect conquests. You know the type. They're usually gorgeous, and you _know _they don't have trouble getting dates. Getting one with a stripper is a status symbol for them, since we're both desirable and notoriously hard to get; sometimes a girl who's new to the business will give them some time. But they don't spend much in here; that's part of their game. Pros with a little experience avoid both types.

"But most of the men who come here are decent guys with half-decent jobs, who'd never work up the nerve to ask for a hot girl's number if they met one in a bar or a supermarket. In here, they can be someone different than they are outside these walls. This is a modern version of the sheik's tent. This is where a guy who wears a football jersey to hide his spare tire comes to pretend that he's a stud who can have his pick of beautiful women. Stripping is the art of making yourself an object of fantasy – not just desirable, but approachable under the right conditions. The money makers in this business are the girls who know how to sell themselves, who can put themselves into a customer's head and become an essential part of his fantasy."

She pointed up on stage, where a short-haired blonde was just stepping out on stage, looking rather dominatrix in a black leather corset and a thong; Anna seemed strangely interested for a moment. "And it starts up there. _That's_ where you advertise your wares, and I'm _not_ talking about what you're hiding under your street clothes. You show attitude. You look sexy. You make the crowd know there's lots more they're not seeing, even if you haven't got a stitch on. You make every guy in the place want you for his very own. Then, if you've shown you've got what it takes, you make your money there." She pointed at the tables. "And especially in there." She pointed to the beaded curtains leading into the private rooms. "Not much goes on in there that you don't see at the tables, usually, or even on stage. What the customers are paying extra for is the illusion of intimacy. On stage, you're dancing for the whole club. At table, you're doing it for the table, even though everyone in the club can still see you. In the booth, you're dancing for him alone, and guys eat it up. Those booths are decorated to resemble bedrooms for a reason. As long as a customer complies with the rules of conduct, and keeps the money coming, he can have the undivided attention of a gorgeous and lusty female, without the slightest risk of rejection. In the booth, a girl who can read her customer can get him to empty his wallet."

Roxy looked at a nearby table dancer, then at one of the curtains. "Sounds kind of … predatory."

"Then I've stated things poorly. If a guy feels he's not getting his money's worth, he can quit buying, or even leave. Roxanne, more times than I can count, I've had a man stick his last twenty into my hands, _knowing_ it means he'll be eating canned soup for dinner every night until payday. Ask any of them if they think they wasted their money." Adrienne leaned forward, intent on getting her point across. "If you're good enough, Roxanne, you can give a man something that he hungers for more than food." She looked up at the next contestant, wearing a two-piece swimsuit, stumbling by in her six-inch heels. "You realize, don't you, that most of these girls are here with their boyfriends?"

"Get outta here! They brought their _boyfriends _to watch this?"

"You've got it backwards, dear. Guys will work on their girlfriends for _weeks_ to get them up on this stage."

"Why? For a thousand dollars?"

Adrienne shook her head. "No. For the thrill of seeing a hundred strangers lusting after a girl _they'll _be taking home. Every Amateur Night, lot security has to tap on car windows, breaking up contestants and their boyfriends… because they couldn't wait till they got home. You understand?"

Roxy shook her head slowly. "I don't think so. I've got a better idea of what's going on inside the _sun_ than I do what's going on inside my boyfriend's head."

The older girl smiled, pushed her chair back, and rose. "Take your seat back, Sarah. I've got to mingle."

"I don't know," Sarah said. She was standing with her back to Tony, so close they could probably feel each other's body heat. "I'm fine right here." He seemed rather at war with himself over the Apache Princess's proximity and aggressive behavior. He took a short step back as Adrienne passed by. Without looking behind her, Sarah stepped back as well, closing the gap again.

"The room is clean," Anna said in a low voice. "There are no IO employees or retirees on the premises. There are cameras, but they're focused on the stage and the bar. I'm watching the doors. We're as safe here as anywhere."

"Ladies, not to worry," Tony said. "Whoever you're on the lookout for, they'd better behave if they show up, or else. And we'll make sure you get to your car okay. Relax and have fun."

Sarah said, "You know, I'm sure you could watch over us just as well if you sat at our table." She pulled her chair out. "And it might keep the free drinks from piling up. Come on, take a load off."

He sat cautiously. As soon as his hands were on the table, her fingers were digging into his meaty shoulders. "Just as I thought. So _tense_." His breath hissed out from between his teeth as she massaged his shoulders, his neck, and the back of his head. "It's like kneading a block of _wood_. Help me out, Paleface? This is your specialty."

The corner of Anna's mouth lifted as she rose from her chair and took up a position behind the big man. Side by side, the two women worked on his shoulder and neck muscles. His raised his chin and closed his eyes to slits.

"Sis," Roxy said in a low voice, "Adrienne looks like a tough act to follow." Her little sister wasn't talking about stage performance, she was sure.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. Do you think she knows what she's talking about? About guys, I mean, and why they come here." She turned to Tony. "Has Adrienne been here long?"

"Couple years off and on. Adrienne's our number one girl around here. Uhhh, yeah, right _there_. Owner's damn glad to have her. She really belongs in a club in L.A., or Vegas."

Sarah and Anna gave her conspirators' looks as they worked on Tony's neck and shoulders; you could almost hear him purr. _They're getting him relaxed and talkative, before Adrienne gets back._ "Then why is she here?" But she thought she already knew.

"So she can have more time with her kid. Husband's got custody, the prick. Ahhh."

She felt a prickle at the back of her neck. "Why do you say that? Have you met him?"

"No, but _everybody_ knows how he got the kid away from her. Showed the judge some magazine pictures of her naked, and convinced him the little guy couldn't have a normal life with her. Like she's some kind of slut who'll be bringing men home to bang on the sofa while the kid's watching cartoons."

The other three women looked at her sharply. She knew what they were thinking. They'd pounced on her when she'd gotten home last night AND fired questions at her about her first date ever, from his appraisal of her at the restaurant to the embarrassed little peck on the lips she'd given him at the end of the night by her car door. The Q and A had turned into a party as they'd discussed men in general and Dan in particular. The sweet, attentive, and gentlemanly Dan Grissom she'd described to them didn't jibe with the ruthless stranger of Tony's description. Her sistahs were wondering what she was getting herself into.

_Well, so do I. _

A huge shout went up from the audience. The girl on stage had pulled down her bra, and was squeezing her ample breasts together for the crowd.

"First tit of the night," Tony said. "The ice is broken now. Gonna see a lot more skin on stage from now on. We can move you to another table if you have a problem with it."

"None at all," Sarah replied, still running her fingers through the hair on the back of his neck as she glanced up on stage. She bent low, and breathed into his ear as she spoke. "If we did, this would be a stupid place for a girls' night out, don't you think?"

Tony groaned. "_God_, that feels good. You girls both single?"

"Why would it matter?" Anna smiled as her eyes flicked from door to door while she squeezed his trapezius muscles.

"Cuz after doing something that feels this good, we really oughtta get married." He grinned.

"True. But I'm still married to the _last_ guy I did this for."

"Heh. Guess that leaves you, Sarah."

"Don't be silly. I'm a lesbian, remember?"

"Huh?"

The glitter was back in Sarah's dark eyes, but her tone was still pleasant. "You know. A dildo queen. A rug muncher. A dyke." Her fingers never changed rhythm. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To keep us dykes from making trouble of some kind? Oh dear, all tense again."

"Um, I-"

"Shikasin, this man's been nothing but kind since he got here." Anna stroked Tony's head. "Save your ire for the cretin who deserves it – the jerk at the ticket window."

"I don't know what kind of run-in you had with Sam," Tony said carefully, "but he's an idiot. He couldn't hold a job here if he wasn't the owner's brother. He likes to pretend he's collecting the gate because he's the only one his brother trusts with the money, but, really, it's the job he's least likely to screw up. On behalf of all custodians of the Y chromosome, I apologize. _Please_ don't stop." Anna laughed, followed a moment later by the rest of them, Sarah included.

"Your fingers are probably getting tired," Anna said. "Give them a rest, Princess. Just rub the back of his head, while I try to do something with these traps. Tony, this would be a lot easier if your shirt was off."

"No _way_."

"Wasn't a suggestion, just an observation. It would also be easier if your muscles weren't so _huge_. Football in college?"

"High school. I was good enough to get looked over by some college scouts. Then I wasted my knee, senior year. Best thing could have happened to me. Otherwise I'd still be on some third-rate team, spending half my life waiting for something to heal so I could get back in the game." He was loosening up again under Anna's expert touch; his eyes closed to slits. "Hmmmm. Coach was the absolute best. Made us come to him right after school every day, but the first hour of practice was a study hall, and he knew where every one of us was having trouble. Instead of talking the teachers into passing us, he talked them into tutoring us. I graduated with three winning seasons, a blown knee, and a B-plus average. Any other football coach would've smuggled me past my classes until I got hurt, then cut me with nothing to show for four years of high school but F's in all my subjects." He sighed. "Wouldn't have got to college without that guy, much less get my degree."

Sarah's hand stilled. "You've got a degree? In what?"

He grinned. "Not diesel repair. Social science."

One of Sarah's academic targets was a minor in social science. "Why aren't you _doing _something with it?"

"I do, every night. There's more to keeping order in a place like this than jumping on guys who break the rules. People won't come to a club where the security's all gorillas licking their knuckles and waiting for trouble. You have to study the group dynamics, and see which tables bear scrutiny, so you can quell trouble before it starts."

"And did _we_ bear scrutiny?"

"Yes, but not because we thought _you'd _make trouble. I was standing by the bar watching the crowd when Rock called me on the radio and said we've got a group of four girls coming in, and make sure there's no trouble. I saw what he meant as soon as you came out of the hallway and posed."

Caitlin felt a touch of heat rise to her cheeks; she hoped the club's dim lighting concealed it. "We weren't _posing_; we were just looking around."

"I call em as I see em. The whole place ground to a halt while every guy in here looked you over. Hell, _I _couldn't take my eyes off you for half a minute." He nodded towards the untouched beers on the table. "The armchair quarterbacks bought those before you found a table – told the server to bring em as soon as you sat. And when Adrienne jumped up and ran over to greet you like old friends, it all fell into place. By the time I went back to the bar for your drinks, everybody in the club knew what was going on."

"Oh?" It wasn't much of a comeback, but it was all she had.

"Yeah. So, where are you girls from?" His tone was too casual.

"Well, I'm from Seattle. Sarah's from some little town in Arizona. Roxy-"

"No. I mean, 'what club?'"

She paused, feeling off balance. Anna's and Sarah's hands stilled. She said, "We're not dancers. Why would you think so?"

"Aside from your looks? Because of Adrienne. I said she's our number one girl, but not just because she's our biggest money maker. She half runs this club - not official, but she makes suggestions to Eric that always pay off. Adrienne knows the business, the entertainment side anyway. She hasn't really been dancing long, but she's made tracks. She's worked clubs from coast to coast, and she knows _everybody_. The girls and the clients have gotten classier since she came here. Income's up, and the club's getting a good reputation all over So Cal. Having a headliner with two Playboy spreads didn't hurt either. The club is raking it in, and everybody profits from it, Adrienne especially.

"That's not all. She's got fan sites on the Web, and a subscription service, too. About once a month, she hires a good photographer to take naughty pictures of her for subscribers to access. Plus she models lingerie for the naughty-girl shops and costumes for the stripper trade. The girl has money coming her way in buckets, and nobody thinks she's blowing it like a lot of them do. Everybody thinks it's just a matter of time before she opens a club of her own."

He grinned. "And four ladies with 'showgirl' written all over them come dropping in like they're slumming, and Adrienne's chatting with them before they sit down. You're not from _anywhere_ around here; some of these guys travel to clubs all over, and they'd know. My money's on Toronto."

"We're not dancers," she repeated.

"Uh huh."

"Why Toronto?" Roxanne asked.

"Because," he said, giving her a look no grown man should give a seventeen-year-old girl, "everyone knows that Toronto clubs have some of the hottest women in the Western Hemisphere."

"Oho," Sarah said, starting on his shoulders again. "You just made _her_ day."

"Don't let it go to your head, sweetie." Anna resumed as well, smiling. "I'm sure you and I are basking in our sisters' reflected glory."

"Oh, _not_ so," he replied, rolling his head loosely. "You have the most _beautiful_ fingers of any woman I have ever known." Then he gave Roxy a mischievous grin. "There are plenty of guys who'd get a dirty thrill from watching a sexy little thing who can make herself look like jailbait; I bet they _swarm_ to the stage when you dance."

"We're _not_ dancers. I'm a computer programmer. Anna's a housekeeper. Roxy's still in school; so's Sarah."

"Uh huh," he said again. He gestured towards dancers on the floor, writhing naked or half-naked at the tables. "Delia's a paramedic. Stacy does financial planning. Jill manages a daycare. They all make more money working nights at the club than they do at the jobs they went to school for." He twisted his head to look up at Sarah. "That degree on my resume got me a job working for the county, taking kids away from their parents by court order. I'm still just hired muscle. I use what I learned in school more _here_."

"So," Roxy said coyly, "How old do you think I am?"

"Well, I'd never try to guess a girl's age, but since you ask … twenty-four, maybe. No more."

"Ha! I'm barely legal."

_He can't really believe she's the oldest_, Caitlin thought_. He's playing her for information._

"No way." He looked at her sister, and then at her. "If you're brand new to the business, how'd you end up in _this _crew? Apprenticeship program? You _gotta_ be older than that."

"We're not dancers," she said tiredly. "Roxy, show him your ID."

He looked the card over, making a show of glancing from Roxy to the photo and back again. "Huh. It's real hard to believe you just turned twenty-one."

"The guy at the window thought so, too; only the other way around. He tried to run a copy."

"A what?" His brows gathered.

Caitlin explained, "He wanted to run her ID through the copier. He made it sound like you do it all the time. Don't you have a lot of minors trying to sneak in?"

"Sure," he said thoughtfully. "Boys, not girls. And we deal with suspicious ID by refusing entry."

Adrienne returned to the table. "Hoo, I'm dizzy. I think I've been to every table on the floor. Men are pulling me out of my chair to come visit. But I haven't danced once; they all want to sit me down with a drink and ask about _you_." She plunked down in Anna's chair. She looked at Tony and the two women standing behind him. "_You _three are taking attention away from the floor show. Tony, every time I glance this way, you look like you're having an orgasm." The big guy flushed. "I've had eleven guys ask me what you two would charge for half an hour – and I don't think they're all talking about massage; one of them's a Crockett."

"Crockett?"

"Undercover Vice," Tony said. "Scum of the earth. Obvious as hell. But we take their money. They turn into big spenders if they're fishing for illicit activity." He stood. "You sticking around for a few, Adrienne? I need to take care of something."

Adrienne looked at her. "I was about to leave. I thought you were supposed to stick close."

"I'm supposed to make sure these girls don't have any trouble. If you're here, Rock is sure to keep an eye on the table."

"He's been doing that anyway," Anna said. "Older guy, about thirty-five. Six-two, two-forty, solid as a rock – hence the name? Chin-length hair like Eddie's."

"That's him," Tony said, giving her an odd look. "But no one's supposed to notice. He's our shadow man, sort of a hidden reserve in case of _real _trouble: he stays in the background, and even a lot of the regulars don't know him."

"He's not obvious," she reassured him. "He moves around a lot, but he hardly says two words to anybody but staff. He almost never looks this way, but he keeps a clear line of sight to our table."

"Good eyes. I'll be right back."

After he left, Anna asked Adrienne, "Why are undercover policemen the scum of the earth?"

"Because, I swear, if a cop is a total washout at anything else, if he can't even make out a _traffic _ticket right, he ends up in Vice. Maybe not the drug guys, but the ones who come to places like this, for sure. It's totally undemanding work, and an easy way to hike up your arrest record; arrestees _never _run or fight, and you can get away with running someone in on the least suspicion. Most of them are creeps a girl here wouldn't waste a smile on outside these walls."

"They've just got a job to do; why the hostility?"

"You wouldn't ask if you'd seen what I have. These guys are all wife beaters. Not really, I suppose, but they have the most _despicable_ attitudes about the girls in here, as if we're all whores and sluts who deserve anything we get." Her mouth thinned to a line. "One time in another club, I watched these two Crocketts at a table by the stage playing scissors-paper-rock while they watched this girl doing her number. As soon as she was naked down to her footie socks, they jumped up. The guy who lost the game walked across the room to arrest a girl at the bar. The winner arrested the girl on stage – cuffed her hands behind her back right there, with the music still playing, and led her out of the building into the back of his car. She rode like that all the way downtown, with other motorists staring at her and the cop in the front seat making comments nonstop. He threw his trenchcoat over her shoulders at the station as he was leading her in and booked her on 'suspicion of prostitution'. They didn't have a thing on her. The girl at the bar was the real suspect; the girl on stage was just for fun." She shook her head. "They pay pricks like that fifty grand a year, to show assholes with crucifix lapel pins and voter blocs that the City's enforcing the blue laws."

"Gee. Maybe I _should_ give one of them a massage." The little blonde grinned evilly. "Someone would have to carry him out afterwards."

Tony reappeared from the hallway, went to the bar, and leaned across it to speak to a tall black man, who nodded gravely and spoke to another bartender. The second man left the bar and went into the hallway. Then Tony spoke to Rock. Rock's fist clenched and relaxed as Tony talked; the big man nodded and spoke a few words.

Anna's smile disappeared. "Something's happening, but it's okay. We're not in danger."

Adrienne gave her an odd look and glanced around, taking in all the activity. "What is it? Every guy on staff is stirred up about something."

"I think we're all about to find out."

Tony came back to them, leaned over the table, and laid several currency notes on the tabletop in front of Caitlin.

"What's this?"

"Your cover. And all your drinks are on the house, anything you want." He looked around the table. "Sam wants me to tell you that he's _very _sorry for causing you ladies any distress." He looked at Roxy. "And he'd like to apologize to _you _in person, abjectly. But if you want to hear it, you'd better see him soon, before his mouth swells up any more."

"_Tony!_" Sarah's almond eyes were so wide they were almost round. "It wasn't worth losing your _job_ over."

"Opinions vary. But I don't think I need to worry about that. If Sam's stupid enough to tell…" He shrugged. "If Eric ever fires me, he won't stick a pink slip in my pay envelope, he'll do it face to face. And when I tell him his brother's been using the job he gave him to build a stalker file, it won't be _me _losing a job."

_Stalker file?_ Kat looked around the table; her housemates wore the same puzzled expression, but Adrienne had the same look as when she'd described the vice cops.

"While I was having my little chat with Sam, I had a look around the booth. I found a stack of copies _this _thick." He spread his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "_Maybe_ he did it for the reason he said, but no inspector would think to ask, and he never volunteered them, or I'd know about it. And _maybe_ it's just a coincidence that, besides being on the young side, they're all good-looking girls with out-of-town addresses. Will's putting them through the office shredder right now." His eyes locked with Sarah's. "This was a _very_ big deal, believe me. Decent girls won't visit or work in a club where they have to worry about some perv following them home. Places like this, a sexual predator of _any _kind on the payroll is the freaking Antichrist. Bad enough we got to let some in the door." He gazed deliberately at a table where two men sat, and she suddenly knew who the undercover policemen were.

"I doubt he went any further than daydreaming about looking those girls up. Even so, if word got out, this place would close, _hard_. Every guy who works here would spend some time downtown answering nasty questions. The girls would be okay, they'd find work at other clubs. But every guy here would be guilty by virtue of gender. No other club would take a chance on us, thinking maybe we knew and turned a blind eye. The only places that would hire us would be… cesspits where the dancers turn tricks in the toilet stalls." He looked at them all. "So, speaking for all the males working here but one, thank you for telling us, and giving us a chance to make it right."

"Tony," Roxy said, "if I didn't already have a boyfriend, my number would be in your hand this instant."

"Mine too," Anna put in. "You're a _keeper_."

Sarah smiled. "Ditto." The three of them looked at Kat expectantly; Tony looked away, embarrassed.

She shrugged. "My number's the same as Roxy's, Tony. Long distance, though."

"Sure," he said. "International call, maybe."

"And with that," Adrienne said as she stood up, "I think it's time for that dance I promised you. Yesterday, at dinner." Instead of going into a routine, she extended a hand. In a voice just loud enough to be heard over the music, she said, "Take my hand. It's customary to lead a client to the room."

Kat stood slowly, feeling very uncomfortable and self-conscious, as if every eye in the place was turned towards her. Adrienne's head tilted up, maintaining eye contact, a smile touching her face. "It always takes me by surprise when you stand up, how tall you are." The older girl took her hand and led her towards one of the bead curtains.

"Do you do this very often?"

"Have heart-to-hearts with my ex's girlfriends?" She grinned over her shoulder at her. "Or dance for other girls?"

"Either."

"Never. Two firsts in one." They passed through the curtain. "This isn't easy for me either, you know. I've been thinking for hours about it. If I'd had your number, I might have called it off."

The room was rectangular, and the doorway opened at one end of a long wall. A large overstuffed couch stood against the short wall at the other end. The floor and walls were carpeted; the music came in through the doorway, but voices weren't likely to travel out before being absorbed. The lighting was soft and intimate, dimmer than the room outside, and the couch was hidden from the doorway unless someone stuck their head in.

Adrienne said, "This is about as private as we get around here. We can do this at a coffee shop after work, if you'd rather."

"No. I've been having second thoughts too. If I postpone…"

"Okay. Let's take a seat."

Adrienne waited for her to settle into one end of the couch, and then stepped toward one of the small tables flanking the couch and was about to put her purse on it when Connor, the security chief, poked his head in. "You got customers asking for you, Adrienne."

Adrienne's back was to the doorway, and her purse was hidden from his view by her body; she opened the clasp and snapped it shut loudly before setting it on the table. "I'm _with _a customer, Connor." She tugged on the tie of her robe and let it fall to the floor. "Do you _mind_?"

He looked from Adrienne to her and back again. "Uh, sorry." He withdrew.

"Sorry," Adrienne said. "He's never done that before. Nerves, do you suppose, or curiosity?" The woman's amused expression fell away when she looked at her face. "What's wrong?"

The robe had been just opaque enough to hide the details of what Adrienne wore underneath. The garment she wore next to her skin was a sheer lacy two-piece confection that concealed not a single detail of her figure; a coat of paint would have hidden more. She looked down at herself. "Ah. I forget what this must look like. Kat, when you're working, your skin is just another costume. Even the guys on staff don't notice. I could pass one in the back hall naked, and later he'd remember if I was chewing gum before he'd recall what I was wearing." She grinned. "Have to remind myself that most women never get naked in front of a stranger their whole lives." She turned her head towards the doorway. "I bet he'll poke his head in one more time, just to make sure I'm working; after that, he'll leave us alone until we come out."

Adrienne took up a position just in front of Caitlin's knees and began moving to the music. "Like I said, I've been thinking about this little talk, trying to decide how much to say, how to avoid coming across as a bitter woman. You don't need that. Anna doesn't talk much, does she?"

The abrupt change of subject took her off-balance. "Well, actually, she's usually a little chatterbox. But we're in a strange environment, and sometimes she takes the den-mother thing pretty seriously."

"Where on earth did she see action? I'd swear she's too small for any branch of service, and I _know _they'd never put her in a combat unit."

Her unease ratcheted up about six notches. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, she's got the look. Even when she's taking a drink or laughing at a joke, her eyes never stop moving; she sweeps the whole room about twice a minute, looking for trouble. Just like Danny, every time he came back from overseas. First word of advice, Kat: if he changes his mind about another tour, don't drive with him the first week back home. He won't take the same route twice to _anywhere_, not even a store three blocks away. Or a route that brings him in view of a building more than one story tall if he can avoid it. He'll _floor_ it going under overpasses. He'll look at every pedestrian as if he's got a gun, and he'll _creep_ up to a light to avoid stopping. And if he has to stop, he won't get within two lengths of the car in front of him. He must go through hell over there, especially when he's just back from leave."

"You… sound like you still care about him."

"I still _love_ him. But marrying him was a mistake I wouldn't make again." The woman stepped closer, between her knees, and continued, moving sinuously to the music while she spoke in a casual voice suited to a coffee-table conversation. "If I could go back in time, I'd let him get me pregnant, and then leave him without any warning, crying buckets I'm sure, and move to Canada."

"So you could keep Drew."

"Exactly." Her fingers made silent snapping motions at her sides. "You know, my gaydar's pretty good, usually. I spotted Sarah before you guys sat down. Just from her walk as she came down the hallway, I'd have known she was gay, and probably a dominant partner, even though she looks like a queenie. But when she moved through the crowd, the shoulders stopped swinging and suddenly she was walking hipshot as a runway model. She's either bi with a strong bias towards women, or one of those rare lesbians who like to dicktease. Does she really have a boyfriend? A _boy_ boyfriend?"

"Bobby. They're tighter than tight, but… they sleep together, but they don't do it. Trying makes her physically ill, but she does anyway. Nobody can figure them out."

"Wow. Well, Roxy's got 'boy toy' written all over her; boyfriend or no boyfriend, I bet Tony's got her number by the end of the night. Anna seems straight, but the way she studies the girls on stage makes me wonder."

"Uh, Anna thinks her husband invented sex, and still holds the patent. If she's checking out other girls, she's looking for new tricks to use on him later." _That didn't hurt a bit, now, did it? _"She didn't have any women around when she was young, so she's sort of learning how as she goes along. Really, we're her first girlfriends ever."

"What was she, camp whore to a bunch of survivalists? _That_ would explain everything." Once again, Adrienne's smile disappeared after a glance at her face. "Jeez. I was _joking_."

"Actually," she said carefully, "she probably would have preferred that. I can't talk about it."

"Okay. That leaves you, Kat. I have to say, you're a lot more uncomfortable right now than I'd expected. Watching me dance was _your_ idea, after all. Are you a closet prude, or is it something else?"

"It's something else."

The other woman raised an eyebrow. "No need to be ashamed. They say most women have a little of it in them, and I'm inclined to agree." She bumped knees with her as she moved.

"It's not that. I'm looking at you like this, and I can't help imagining you with Daniel. And then I imagine _me_ with Daniel."

She stilled. "Oh."

"Ever since I came in here with you, it's as if I accidentally stumbled into his bedroom, with him right behind me. I really don't feel ready for that."

"You haven't done it with him yet?"

She dropped her head. "I…"

"_Kat_. You're not a…"

"It's not a disease, Adrienne. I just never found the right guy."

"There's no such thing, sugar," she said gently, sitting beside her and taking her hand. "Not for a first time."

"Maybe. But it should at least be someone you can trust. Someone you know won't put a notch on his headboard afterwards."

"I'll be damned. Does he know?"

She shrugged. "I'm sure no one's told him."

Adrienne breathed, "You're _perfect_ for him. A goddess of virtue. He'll _worship_ you."

"That doesn't sound like the path to love."

"You _are _a perfectionist, aren't you? There are plenty of times _I _would have settled for worship. Or even a little respect." She took a deep breath. "I promised myself I wasn't going to sound like a pissed-off ex. Danny would be an outstanding match for the right girl; I just wasn't the right girl."

"And what would make you think I'm the right girl?"

"Well, for starters, what you see in the mirror every day. If you haven't figured it out, I met Danny in a club while I was working. I'd got my first Playboy spread at eighteen, before I started dancing. I was fairly new to the business. He was a player, all full of charm and looking _so_ heroic in uniform. He talked me into a date."

"That's not reassuring."

"How about this, then. After the second date, he never saw another girl. And I'd bet my life he never cheated while we were married, at least not until I said I wanted to call it quits, and maybe not even then." The corner of her mouth twitched. "When he's with you, he sure _acts_ like he hasn't had any in a long while. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to keep you at arm's length until he signs the divorce papers. _Then_, girlfriend, you'd better decide whether he's going to be your first – quick."

"That's one reason I'm here. Another is... you think he stayed faithful to you from second date to divorce. Well and good, but I need… a deeper loyalty, Adrienne. And I can't risk betrayal."

Daniel's ex knitted her brows together. "What are you asking me, Kat?"

"I know he re-upped while you were married. Did you ask him not to?"

She shook her head, tawny locks bouncing off her shoulders from the vehemence of it. "I thought it was pointless; The guys in his family are career military for four generations. If I'd imagined he'd bail out after two terms, I would have."

She swallowed. "What _else_ wouldn't he do for you?"

Adrienne was silent for several seconds, looking at her. "So it's his heart and soul you want?" Her eyelids drooped almost closed. "Then I've got nothing to tell you. If I had the key to _that _lock, we'd still be married."

"You heard about his new job. When he first told me about it, he seemed as happy as a kid with a new toy. But we're going to be working for rival firms, Adrienne, and the competition isn't friendly. I want to know how much strain it's going to put on the relationship – or if it's going to make things impossible at the outset."

"These two firms. Do they spy on each other? Sabotage each other?"

"Yes and yes. It's been downright bloody in the past. The firms have completely different operating principles. Each of them thinks they're the good guys, and they're just keeping the other guys from doing something disastrous." She permitted herself a small smile. "But the people who hired him are jerks. Seriously."

Adrienne looked away. "His loyalty is one of his most endearing traits; if he's taking their money, this… new firm would have to really abuse that loyalty to lose it. And he'd still soldier on, if he thought the cause was right, even if he lost faith in his employer. But he won't betray you to them. Just don't ask him to betray them to you. You can keep secrets from him, if you're up front about it; he understands security. But don't try to deceive him. If you can do that, you can count on him to do the same for you."

"If his bosses find out we're dating, I'm certain it'll mean big trouble for him."

"Does he understand that?"

"I've told him. If he doesn't believe it now, he will soon."

"It won't matter; he's already made his decision. He won't dump you to make his boss happy."

"What if they tell him my firm's working against the national interest?" At the woman's look she said, "I told you it was a cutthroat rivalry."

Adrienne seemed to be thinking it over. "Tell him your side, and let him choose. Until then, don't put anything damaging in his hands. Beyond that, I can't say. But he won't let go of you easily, I can tell." She sighed. "A bigger threat to your relationship may be his dad."

"Andy? How?"

The curtains parted, and Connor's head poked in. "Everything okay here?"

"_Yes_, Connor." Adrienne fiddled with her top, as if she were having trouble getting it back on. "Everything's _fine_." After he left, she said, "You don't want to get on his dad's bad side. Danny adores him, and he goes to him for advice on _everything_. When things started going bad between Danny and me, Andy made sure they never got better; that when we hurt each other, the wounds never closed."

"He seemed plenty nice, if a bit… I think the word is 'chauvinistic.'"

"You saw him at his best. And why not? You're exactly what he wants in a daughter-in-law. You're gorgeous, smart, and you make a good living using what's between your ears, so his son can have all the goodies for himself." She stood and picked up her robe. "I won't lay the blame at anyone's doorstep. There are a few places I might have made a different decision and made a difference." She slipped the garment on and tied it off. "But then I wouldn't have been _me_." She sat back down.

"Andy thought I was the greatest when Danny and I were dating, mainly because his son wasn't sleeping around anymore, I think now. The attitude changed when Danny asked me to marry him. Apparently, a stripper girlfriend was just fine, but an ex-stripper wife wasn't good enough for his boy. And when the two of them realized I wasn't going to quit… except for about five minutes when Drew was born, he was never cordial again.

"It wasn't just Andy's attitude, though. Guess we should have discussed it before I said yes, but we both made some wrong assumptions: Danny thought that as soon as we were married, my body was for him alone to enjoy; I thought, since he met me when I was dancing, he wouldn't have any problem with my career choice. Our first argument about that set the tone for our whole marriage. And when we filed our first joint return, they were both _outraged _that I made more money than Dan. Lots more. A woman selling her body shouldn't prosper, apparently. And the looks on their faces when they saw that I'd itemized my implants and my memberships at the gym and tanning salon!"

"You _didn't_."

"Legitimate job expense under IRS guidelines. All I had to do was document an increase in my income as a direct result, which wasn't hard." She pressed her lips together briefly. "I suppose I could have quit, but I was just getting used to better clothes and such, and I wasn't ready to switch to living in base housing and making ends meet on Danny's pay. Also, I thought of adult entertaining as a career, a _good _career, and I resented my husband and father-in-law acting as if it were something any decent person would abandon first chance they got.

"So I kept dancing and making money and putting it by, because Danny refused to let me throw it in the pot; we had to run the household on just his money, even if it took everything he made. Then I got pregnant and quit, and they thought they had me domesticated finally. When Drew was born, they both had steam shooting out their ears when I told Dan I wanted to go back to work when the baby was old enough to leave with a sitter. And his dad set up that trust fund so my dirty money wouldn't be putting Drew through college. As if the money they'd paid him while he was killing Cambodian villagers was _so_ much cleaner. It made me sorry I let Danny talk me into naming our only child after the self-righteous bastard.

"After five years, I'd had enough of the endless bickering. I told Danny on his last leave that I wanted out. I was still keeping his house, but I was just waiting for him to rotate back before I filed; it didn't seem right to divorce him while he was overseas. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have been in Ontario with Drew before he came back.

"Anyway, sugar, you look like the girl of his dreams, and he'll stand by you, so long as you don't betray his causes or his prejudices, and you stay on the right side of his old man. If you can do that, Danny will do _anything _for you, and so will Andy. You'll have to decide for yourself if you can fit in their mold, and if it's worth the effort."

She nodded. "Kay. There's something else I wanted to ask you about. Did you ever dance in Memphis?"

"For about two weeks, maybe two-three years ago. Special engagement."

"It's a long shot, but did you meet a couple of girls there: twins, black? Palling with a white girl, shorter, brown hair?" Reaching, she added, "They might not have been dancing then, just waiting tables."

Adrienne shook her head. "I'd remember, I'm sure. Do you know the name of the club?" She cocked her head. "Are you trying to get in touch with them?"

"No." _I already know where they are._ "But we're out of touch, and I can't ask. I was just wondering what it was like for them."

Adrienne shrugged. "Hard to say. Not all clubs are like this."

"I heard."

"And even if the club is legit, a girl doesn't necessarily make much money. Keep what they earn, rather. Plenty of owners have pretty inventive ways to separate dancers from their take. Most clubs charge them some kind of fee up front, like turning over the proceeds from the first two dances, or buying a minimum number of drinks at inflated prices. Eric doesn't do that - one reason I work here, and recommend Arena's to good dancers."

Something seemed to have changed in the main room beyond the curtain. The background noise from the clientele seemed different, almost hushed; it reminded her of the boys watching a football kickoff on TV. Even the announcer's faint voice had a different quality to it as he said. "On our stage now… Cheetah." Not a single hand clap followed the announcement. Something strange was going on.

The music came up, and that seemed different too. Up until now, it seemed all the music had been of a type: deep bass notes, a vague beat, a breathy female vocalist murmuring about passion. This song was an instrumental, with a lot of electronic elements and a beat as insistent as the one inside her chest, rising and falling but clear and present. It sounded as if it belonged in another sort of club, one with flashing lights and a packed dance floor.

"She _wouldn't_." Caitlin jumped up and headed for the doorway.

"Kat?" Adrienne's startled voice followed her out. "What's wrong?"

She parted the curtains, and Anna slid in front of her. "Only her jacket and shoes. She promised."

Roxanne was already on the runway, about ten feet from the pole, _dancing_. It was the first time Kat had seen anyone on stage actually keeping time to the music, and her sister's movements were sinuous and graceful and sexy as all get out, if she was any judge. Kat recognized what Roxy called her "while-your-boyfriend's-watching" routine, the moves she only did at home. Her movements were in time to the music, but half a beat behind, as if the music was pulling her along in its current. Her eyes were softly closed, her expression rapt. And the audience was completely silent.

"Anna. Why didn't you _stop_ her?"

"How, exactly? Knock her unconscious?"

Roxanne's idea of "modest dress" had consisted partly of a pair of tight hip-huggers that ended at mid-calf, combined with heelless slip-on shoes. She was already barefoot. Kat suddenly realized that she had no idea what her sister was wearing under her bulky old leather jacket.

She was about to find out. Roxy rolled her head and shoulders in a supple movement, and the jacket slid off her shoulders like a sheet of water, as if by accident. She caught it as it gathered around her wrists and dropped it off the stage in a smooth motion; underneath, she was wearing a silky white camisole-style top that tucked into her pants. It clung to her and revealed her bra's purple spaghetti straps.

"What are we going to _do_?" She said softly.

"Do?" Adrienne's voice was behind her.

"It's like a _tomb_ out there. As soon as they get tired of waiting for her to strip, they'll boo her off the stage."

"Kat," the older girl said, "use your eyes."

She did. The audience was still, intent; one man had a glass raised almost to his lips, unmoving. Every male eye was fastened on the stage.

Adrienne went on, "Looks to me like she's giving them _exactly_ what they want, though I bet they didn't know it until they got it. Your little sister's a natural."

Caitlin leaned towards Anna. "Allure?"

"Near full power. The little exhibitionist is having the time of her life."

"What do you think, Tony? Tony?" Sarah took the man's chin in her hand.

"Sorry," he said, not taking his eyes from the stage. "Since you all walked in, every guy in the place has been wondering. Waiting to see if any of you'd get up on stage tonight. It was worth the wait. Definitely."

Her little sister stretched her arms over her head, pulling her shirt out of her pants seemingly unnoticed. She rocked her hips in time to the music as she did fractional turns, giving the whole audience a look at her from every angle. She brought one hand down to her stomach and slid it back up as high as her sternum, taking the bottom of the cami with it and exposing her flexing abs, shining with a mist of perspiration, and the bottom hem of her lacy purple bra. As she turned, you could see that the garment was lifted out of her pants in back too; the shoestring-sized straps of her matching purple thong rode high on her slender hips, bobbing with her motion. Without revealing as much of her figure as she would at the beach, she was letting every man in the place see her in her underwear, making him imagine her undressed, naked. She seemed oblivious to the way she was exposing herself, too carried away by the animal pleasure of dancing to notice.

"Damn," Tony said. "Did I say 'dirty little thrill'? I feel like I'm peeking in her window."

Kat felt a flush spread on her neck. She reminded herself that her little sister knew _exactly_ what she was doing. And had probably planned it before she'd left the house.

Roxy's eyes snapped wide open, a sleepwalker waking from a dream of pleasure and not sure where she was. She turned all around the room, as if trying to get her bearings, still dancing in time to the music, and the sound of the crowd was like a steam locomotive coming to rest.

Then her expression changed; she still seemed caught up in the music, but now she was fully aware of her audience, making eye contact with men all over the room as she turned and moved to the beat. Like all the performers, she was broadcasting a message without words to every male in the room, but hers was unique. The professionals' message was: _you seem nice. Let's have some fun_; the amateurs', mostly, had been:_ how am I doing, do you like me?_ Roxanne's was: _do you think you could handle this? Are you man enough?_

Men began drifting towards the stage, filling every seat and standing between the tables. Most were reaching for their wallets.

Suddenly the music broke into a long percussion and guitar riff, doubling the tempo of the music. Roxanne burst into movement. Her moves were part gymnastics, part ballet, and part martial-arts moves she'd learned from Eddie and Mr. Lynch: the combination made her look graceful and dangerous and sexy. She dropped to the stage in a one-eighty split, one leg stretched out behind, one in front. She held the pose for just a second, and popped straight up again. She performed a somersault that sent her legs windmilling over her head, her hands never touching the stage, and drew gasps and chatter from the crowd.

"Limber little wildcat, isn't she?" Anna spoke, imitating several men's voices. "Good thing in a small package, man. 'Cheetah.' Right. It'd be like sharin your sheets with a mountain lion."

Roxy took a running leap at the pole and swung around and around on it at head height, first with her hands, then with her legs, twisting and changing position, never sliding down as she shifted from one pose to the next… as if she were defying gravity.

"Could squeeze you in _half_ with those…" Anna said, her voice still man-deep. "Yeah, but you'd die happy."

Tony's eyes were glued to the stage. "If this wasn't Amateur Night, she'd be coming off that stage booked solid for the night." He glanced at her. "You're not dancers. I know."

A little smile touched the corners of Sarah's mouth. "You know, I'm almost jealous."

He gave her the same smoky look he'd given Roxy earlier. "Don't be. Fun as she is to watch, I'd rather it was you up there."

"_Well._" Sarah made a fanning motion, returning the look.

The song ended in a crash of electronic percussion. Roxy slid down the pole and stood looking out at the crowd, which erupted in shouts, applause, and whistles. Two dozen arms stretched across the stage, almost surrounding her, money in hand. Suddenly her sister looked like a young girl again, and alarmed at her predicament.

"Tony," Adrienne said in a warning tone, but the big man was already moving towards the stage, as was Rock. She turned to the other girls and said, "Amateur rules are different. They don't know the legal restrictions, and it's easy to get carried away or just cross the line without knowing it. Nobody wants to see these girls end their night onstage with a trip downtown." She nodded towards the two vice cops, who were also waving money, almost brushing Roxanne's thigh with the bills. "Almost nobody. So they can't dance anywhere but on stage, no physical contact allowed, and any money comes to them through a staff member."

The big men opened a path to the stage. Tony beckoned her to the edge. The men surrounding the stage hooted and cheered as Tony put his hands around her waist, lifted her off the stage, and set her on the floor. She flushed with pleasure as she leaned against the raised platform. Rock collected the offered money. A very few of the patrons tried to put the cash back away once they realized they weren't going to be able to touch her, but Rock stared them down until they gave up their offerings. The big man offered the wad of cash to her as if it was a bouquet, bending over her as the announcer said, "How bout _that_, fellas? Give it up… for… _Cheetah_!" The crowd broke into applause again, shaking the walls.

Both guards escorted her to her table and seated her. Tony set her shoes on the floor by her feet and draped her jacket around her shoulders like a cape. "We've got an hour to go," Rock said in a gravelly voice. "Six or eight more girls, and I bet they all go down to skin trying to catch up. But every guy in this place knows the contest's over. Come with me a minute, Tony."

Roxanne sat with the money still clutched to her, looking overwhelmed. "Thank you for inviting us, Adrienne," she said in a child's voice. "I'm having a wonderful time."

Kat leaned close to her sister's ear and said, "Not to burst your bubble, but the contest doesn't end until midnight." She glanced at her watch. "In fact, we've got to leave soon."

Roxy looked at her, stricken. "No." Her glance shifted to Anna.

Adrienne said, smiling, "What's wrong? Do you all turn into mice at the stroke of twelve?" When no one answered or smiled, she grew serious. "It'll take until twelve-thirty or so to pick the winner. She'll have to strut out on stage, maybe several times, so the crowd can vote by applause. Winners have to accept in person. It's the rules. Do you really have to go?"

"You're all together, and you're with me," Anna said quietly. "Jack wouldn't drop the hammer on anybody, Caitlin."

"Bad precedent." She thought of Keeley, Julie, and Kara. _This is how it happened, with a standing ovation... and a phone call. _"Besides… I've got a bad feeling, suddenly. I don't know what I was _thinking_, bringing us all here. Getting up on stage was just plain crazy."

"She was having fun, and she brought the house down." Adrienne's face clouded. "Please don't tell me he's got to you already." Her mouth twitched.

Anna jumped up and grabbed at Adrienne's hand. Grinning, she tugged the woman towards one of the beaded curtains. "My turn. Come on. This could be the start of a new sideline for you." Adrienne followed reluctantly, casting a quick over-the-shoulder glance at her. They disappeared behind a curtain, leaving the three girls shrugging at one another.

...

"Don't," Anna said as they passed through the curtains. "Just sit. You looked like you might cry. That would be bad, I think. The girls here should never look unhappy; it would destroy the illusion."

"Yes. Thanks. They would have been angry tears, but you're right." She sat heavily. Anna sat beside her.

"Just so you know, Caitlin doesn't have a hypocritical bone in her body. She likes you, and she's not the least bit ashamed of what you do for a living. In fact, I'm sure she wishes she had your confidence; she's always been self-conscious about her looks. She has other reasons to get nervous about her little sister appearing on that stage."

Adrienne looked the little blonde over. "That was just a story about Andy, wasn't it? Where do you really know him from?"

"I think you guessed already. We worked together for over a year, at the same 'security firm.'"

"You're all spooks? You and Kat and Andy?"

She nodded. "And Dan, soon."

"I thought Andy got out of it years ago."

"He did. I'm older than I look."

"You must bathe in Botox, then." She looked critically at Anna's smooth, pale face. "Or… facial reconstruction, maybe?"

"Clever girl. Almost everything you're looking at is artificial; Andy almost didn't recognize me when we met again. Let's let it go at that."

"What's really going on?"

"Dan and Caitlin are in a budding romance. It's very dangerous for both of them, and potentially heartbreaking for her."

"She told me."

"Andy and I are getting chummy after a long separation. He thinks he owes me something."

"Oh?"

The little blonde's face became a mask. "He betrayed me to the enemy. I was a prisoner for six years. He didn't realize what he'd done at the time. But whatever else he is, Andrew Grissom is a man of conscience. I find his remorse useful." She smiled, in a way that didn't seem friendly or reassuring at all. "As well as his inclination to jump my bones."

"_Useful?_"

She nodded. "Yes. I use Andy's influence over Dan to keep a leash on him. Unless he's willing to give her what _she _wants, that young wolf isn't getting his paws on _my_ girl, let him sniff around her and pant all he wants."

Wondering, she said, "You're playing him."

"Like a violin."

"You just made my day. How do you do it?"

"Guilt and lust, like I said. It's easy, really; you just have to know which buttons to push, and how hard. I never miss a chance to tell him it wasn't his fault, not _really_ – but I make sure he knows how horrible the experience was, how it scarred me. As for the other, I act as if being around him is a constant test of my fidelity, and if he pushed the issue, he could have me – even though I'm crazy in love with my husband, and would hate myself forever if I cheated on him just once. For Andy, it's almost better than screwing me."

Adrienne grinned. "Oh, this is just too good. Andy. Who'd have thought it? It warms me all over, thinking about him going to bed alone with aching balls and a smile on his face. Dan too, shame on me."

"Caitlin doesn't know."

"She won't hear it from me."

"Good. There's something else. Word is you're opening your own club."

She shook her head. "Not soon. I want to stay close to Drew, and the market around here's not big enough. I don't want to set up anywhere near Eric."

"What about Temecula, or Murrieta? The travel time would be about the same."

"Not for the customers. Population density's too low. Even the traffic from Pendleton wouldn't make up for it. To set up there, I'd have to have someplace special, a real tourist destination. I've got money saved, half a million, but it's not enough to start up an operation like that. I'd need a sizable cash cushion, while I make mistakes and learn from them." She gave Anna a sour look. "And I'm not likely to get it from a bank. Good credit or no, everybody knows strippers have no head for business."

Anna leaned towards her. "If you want, I can arrange a loan for you, any amount you need."

Adrienne lowered her voice. "What interest?"

"Zero."

She frowned. "Why?"

"The investor I'm thinking of is always looking for ways to shelter money. And before you ask, it's clean. He just prefers diversity and liquidity in his portfolio over income, and he has a limited amount of faith in banks and brokers."

"What does he know about running a club?" She said uneasily.

"Nothing. But it won't be a problem, because he'll be a totally silent partner. I don't think he'll even set foot in the club. You'd pay him back with a percentage of your net, and I don't think he'll want to put his nose in your books, either. It should be much easier than servicing a bank loan. You might find the payment arrangements odd. He's eccentric."

She said carefully, "He wouldn't be looking for some other kind of interest, would he? I couldn't do that, and neither would any girls I hire. No 'private parties' or 'special shows' or 'escort duties.'"

"He'd _better_ not," the little blonde said with a smile, a warm and genuine one that made her look like a young girl. "He's my husband."

"Why would you do this? You hardly know me."

"Caitlin likes you. And you're good to her. She doesn't have many girlfriends, you can imagine. So, do you want an introduction? There's no hurry."

Adrienne nodded. "I'd be crazy not to."

"Good. You'll like Jack. He's like Dan and Andy, but _way _more liberal-minded. By the way. I doubt Andy ever shot a Cambodian villager. I know what sort of mischief his employer was up to at the time. His first assignment was more likely an Afghan warlord and opium exporter. After that, he probably spent some time in Central America, taking on revolutionary groups financing their glorious struggle by selling cocaine to American dealers. Then a stint in Europe or Japan, making the Red Brigades an endangered species. Or maybe making sure the Red Army soldiers who were selling the buttons off their coats at the time weren't 'losing' anything radioactive. Then a little time in the Middle East somewhere; there's always something to do there. He'd have come back to the States about the time Dan was hearing his country's call. What he did here before he retired, I won't even hint at." She smiled. "He's a self-righteous bastard, no doubt. But the world's a better place because of him."

Sarah, leaning against Tony once again, pulled her eyes from the naked girl on stage, and watched Adrienne and Anna emerge from the private room. Adrienne was looking slightly dazed, but Anna had a self-satisfied expression she only wore when she'd knocked the props out from under somebody. "I'm about _this_ close to taking her in there myself." She hooked an arm through Tony's elbow. "Do the bouncers ever dance for female patrons?"

He colored. "Uh, not in the club." Then he smiled. "I'd expect you to reciprocate."

"I wouldn't waste your time. The only dances I know, I do around a fire. No joke."

Kat looked pointedly at her watch. "Speaking of time. It took us an hour to get here. You know how Anna hates freeways." When the two women reached the table, she said, "It's time to go. Thanks for everything, Adrienne. I know we all had a great time."

Every male eye in the club followed them as they headed for the entrance, escorted by Tony and Adrienne. Roxanne blew kisses to the vice cops.

The ticket booth was occupied, but not by Sam. The new man resembled him, but looked younger, with a dark, neatly trimmed goatee.

Tony said, "Somebody told you."

"You really thought nobody would?" The man stepped through the doorway next to the window and met them in the hall. He looked at Roxanne critically. "Between the shakeup and the show you put on, little girl, you've given us a pretty exciting night." He took her hand without shaking it.

"Roxanne, meet Eric. He owns the club."

"And I'm gonna be spending more time running it from now on, I'm thinking." He looked the rest of them over, his gaze including Adrienne in their group. "Ladies, you're all welcome back here anytime, alone or in any combination. Leave your money at home." He met Adrienne's eyes. "And if any of you is ever interested, you've all got open job offers."

"They're not dancers." Tony grinned.

"Uh huh." He let go of Roxy's hand and took Adrienne's, still looking directly into her eyes. "Adrienne, you're the best. You put this place on the map, and I won't forget. Good luck, darling. If you ever need anything, you come see me." He brushed the back of her hand with his lips.

She pulled his beard. "What are you doing, Eric? Firing me?"

He glanced towards the four of them. "I thought…"

"You think I'd leave without training a replacement, at least? Just walk out the door and leave you swinging? _Men._ Eric, I'm not going anywhere, not for a while, anyway. These are some girlfriends of mine from out of town. They just came to visit." Adrienne grinned at her. "What'd I tell you? He really thought I was walking out the door with you, dressed like _this_."

"So they're _not_ dancers?"

"Not tonight, they're not. And they're not here to help me start a club. In fact, they're heading back home right now."

He looked at Roxy. "Contest's not over. I'm sure you'll win, but I can't give you the money if you don't stay till the end."

"It's okay." Amusement glittered in Roxy's violet eyes. "Wouldn't be ethical. It's amateur money." Adrienne grinned at her.

"Tony," Eric said, "make sure these girls get to their car and off the property unmolested by… admirers. Lot security's a little thin right now. I sent Connor home with Sam."

Tony lowered his chin. "You didn't need to do that, Eric. I was done with him."

"I wasn't. Connor will be leaving with Sam's computer. Also his printer, cameras, and any discs he finds that _might_ have pictures on them. Also any photos of women he doesn't recognize. It's gonna take a while; I expect he'll be _very_ thorough. Sam's severance check should be just enough to put the place back together."

Adrienne gave her a hug. "Keep in touch, girlfriend. Anna's got my number. Let me know how things are going. I don't want to hear it first from him."

In the floodlit parking lot, one of the security men approached Tony. "What the hell's going on? After Connor takes off, a bunch of guys come out with their dates and jump in the back seats. They're spawning like salmon out here, swear to God."

Tony glanced at Roxanne, who gave him a blank look. "The contest was surpassing excellent tonight, man. The hormones are thick as soup in there." He took a deep breath, then gripped Sarah by the elbows and turned her to face him, not exactly holding her in his arms, but cradling her. _He didn't fall to the ground with his hair smoking, so she must be okay with it_, Caitlin thought. "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I'd steal a kiss right now."

She tipped her head up. "If I didn't have a boyfriend, it wouldn't be theft. But you know, I really have no use for men. Most of the time. Special circumstances."

"Well, you know what they say about gay chicks." He brushed his lips against hers. "They're the _best_ kissers."

She pushed him away, smiling. "Thanks for everything. This night out was twice as nice because of you."

As they pulled out of the lot, Sarah broke into a dance as she bounced in the shotgun seat, moving her arms and bobbing her head. "Yes. _Yes."_

"What she lacks in skill, she makes up in enthusiasm," Roxanne said from the second seat. "Did I miss something? You didn't actually _do_ anything, did you?"

"Doesn't matter. I _feel_ like I did." Her little dance wound down, and she leaned her head against the window. "Ah. When I get home, I'm spending an hour in a hot tub. Then, when I'm sure he's asleep, I think I'll crawl into bed with my favorite man, buck naked, and see how long I can keep myself from waking him up."

51


	3. Altered Perspectives

Monday September 18 2006  
Boulder

For Daniel Grissom, IO headquarters in Boulder was a trip through the looking-glass. It would have been incredible enough if he'd begun in ignorance; with his almost-girlfriend's story hovering in the back of his mind, everything he saw was experienced with a strange double vision.

They arrived late in the morning. A car had picked him and another man up in Denver after a two-and-a-half-hour flight from San Diego. The ride to Boulder had taken another forty minutes. Instead of seeing them into a hotel, the driver had told them that they were headed for IO Headquarters, which had accommodations for visiting personnel. The hair on the back of his neck rose, but he told himself that IO had no reason to lock him away. _Yet._

IO Headquarters was a small campus-style collection of one-story buildings nestled among the foothills west of the city proper. A twenty-foot berm completely hid it from the road except for the driveway, and there were no signs. He could have driven by a hundred times and never noticed it.

The berm also hid the chain link fence topped with razor wire, and the hundred yards of flat bare ground surrounding it. The curving driveway hid a bunker-like guard shack enclosing the gate like a barbican. As a soldier fresh from a battle zone, he recognized excellent perimeter security; as a man with a frightened girl's story fresh in his memory, he recognized a prison, and wondered what was in the basement.

"Huh," said Dan's fellow passenger, looking out the car window at the Y-frames atop the fence, and the row of concertina hanging from each side. "They trying to keep everybody out or in?" Dan made no comment about the man's observation. Jared Hastings was a recently discharged two-tour Marine: first one in Kosovo, his second at Guantanamo – the naval base, not the prison, he'd been quick to point out. They'd shared a plane unknowing, then chatted on the drive from Boulder. They'd compared notes on their tours, their recent discharges and return to civilian life, and their recruitment back into government service. Dan had told him nothing about what he'd learned from his father and his friends.

Several security checkpoints later, Dan was in a small, comfortable room no different from a hundred hotel rooms he'd stayed in, except that there was no window or phone. Their driver, now their guide, promised to be back in thirty minutes to start orientation. Dan was unpacked in ten. He spent the next twenty minutes sitting on his bed, trying to control his nerves while he waited, wondering how many bugs and cameras were in his room.

IO Headquarters was like an iceberg; only a fraction of it showed above the surface. The above-ground portion was the smallest of at least four floors comprising the huge complex. He saw classrooms, lecture halls, labs, offices, an armory, a library, and a cafeteria that would easily seat a thousand people. The hair on his forearms rose at the thought of how much more of the place they _weren't_ showing him, and what it might contain.

He and a dozen others, including Jared, spent the day being herded from one place to another, filling out forms, getting issued gear, and receiving vague introductions to their new duties: counterterrorism work with new tools and rules of engagement against adversaries the like of which they'd never seen. They were told that detailed briefings would begin tomorrow.

He was surprised to be issued uniforms: charcoal-colored shirts and slacks and a black tie, rather like a police uniform. The left shoulder bore a fat squatty I and O superimposed, resembling a Greek symbol. He'd been told that everyone under arms at IO was entitled to wear it, but only on IO property, and it was only required under certain circumstances; some people chose never to don it at all. Other clothing for field work, from business suits to body armor, would be made available as circumstances dictated.

Late in the afternoon, they'd been released from duty for the day, warned not to leave the campus (as if they could), and stay away from restricted areas. They were permitted use of a phone. Dan had felt cold fingers on his neck when one of the men in his group had told the rest that his cellphone didn't work here.

His conversation with his father and son had been a brief and cryptic attempt to reassure them both. He didn't dare ask about Kat or Annie directly, and Drew had been instructed not to talk about them over the phone; he was sure every word was being monitored. Instead, he politely asked how 'Marie' was doing (having learned over dinner Saturday that his date's full name was Caitlin Marie Fairchild, and shared that knowledge with his father), and got a simple reassurance. He hung up feeling wholly unsatisfied.

He showered and changed into a uniform, taking comfort from familiar habits. He met their earlier guide and five of his classmates, including Jared, for dinner in the cafeteria. He noted that two others of his group were in uniform as well. They talked quietly as they ate, watching the other diners, who mostly ignored the little group.

"Friendly bunch," Jared remarked, returning the occasional glances from the other tables.

"They are, really," their guide said. "And some of these guys are your team mates. But it's customary to let new fish have a day or so to acclimate. And the people here love to talk shop, which they can't do with you until you've started your briefings. Believe me, they'll be plenty chummy once you're dialed in."

He returned to his room, went through the literature he'd been provided, and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

The next morning, he was given a deck of cards, and his indoctrination began in earnest.

Escondido

Monday night, Andy dreamed of her.

He hadn't seen her all weekend. She'd called Saturday night and early Sunday evening, and her voice had warmed him and sent him to bed thinking of her. But she hadn't called Monday; husband back in town, he supposed. He'd gone to bed that night thinking of her with _him_.

It wasn't the first time he'd dreamed of a girl, just the first time in a _long_ time. As a young man, he'd woken to his share of soiled sheets. But this time was very different.

One of his closest friends, an old Team Four buddy, had walked away from the bottle years before. The man had described the vivid "drinking dreams" common to newly recovered alkies and druggies: "Swear to God, Griss, they're realer than waking life. I got a beer in my hand, and I can feel the cold glass, and the wrinkles in the label, and tell whether it's foil or paper. I see the sweat on the bottle, smell it as I bring it to my mouth. When I wake up the next morning, I gotta look under the bed for empties." Andrew's dream of Annie had the same clarity of perception, which later gave him reason to compare his feelings for her to a number of unhealthy habits.

It started in the lab, their typical morning routine. Seabrook and Randall were going over the sheaf of papers detailing the experiments to be performed, while he and Alistair went to retrieve the test subject from its container. As he walked alongside the smaller man, he was half aware he was dreaming, but the thuds of his feet on the tile and the cool air on his skin seemed too real to allow the thought any traction.

As Alistair bent to work the combination keypad on the standup safe, he trained his weapon on the doorway at head height. In his gunsight, he watched the door swing open, fully expecting to see his red sighting dot to appear on the robot's blank doll-face.

It wasn't there, just the back of the box. His heart jumped into his throat before Alistair said, in his Scottish burr, "Well, _there_ y'are. Promise ta be a good girl today?"

He dropped the barrel. Instead of standing at the door like a mannequin, as it had every other time, it was sitting with its back against one wall, hugging its knees. Then the face lit up in a smile, and he couldn't think of the creature in the safe as an _it_ anymore.

"_Yes,_ Alistair," she said, almost laughing, "I promise to be a good _gerull_ and not break anything, or hurt anyone, or spit on the floor. Can I come out now?" Alistair offered her a hand, but before Grissom could shout a warning, she'd taken it, flowed to her feet, and stepped out. She smiled at the researcher and brushed his hair off his forehead with two middle fingers, a delicate and intimate gesture. "Morning." Alistair grinned at her.

Then she looked over the barrel into his eyes, smiling with amusement rather than pleasure, his sighting dot on her forehead like a caste mark. "Hey, Sarge. Keeping your powder dry?"

Then she turned to Randall, who'd left Seabrook and joined them. Her expression cooled somewhat. "Hi, Randall. How they hanging?"

The tall, dark-haired researcher acknowledged with a leer. "Just fine. A little itchy, though, thanks for asking." As he turned away, Andy thought something seemed strange about the man's walk, but couldn't say what.

She watched him rejoin Dr. Seabrook. "One of these days, I swear." She stretched slowly. The vest over her tee shirt was unfastened, and parted as she lifted her arms over her head. Then she looked down at her smudged clothing. "Ech. I look like a chimney sweep. I see Dr. Seabrook is a little slow setting up, as usual. Suppose there's any chance of a shower before we start?" She cast an eye towards the bathroom door. "Oh, well." She took a step in that direction.

His heart jumped. He placed his sight dot at the base of her skull. "Halt!"

She did, but didn't turn. She cocked her head slightly. "Alistair, is there any way out of there besides the door?"

"Nah," the man said. "Not even a window. We're ten meters underground, after all."

"Sarge, I'm going in there to wash up a little. If you're worried, stand at the door and we'll talk through it, so you know I'm there." He couldn't see her face, but somehow he knew dimples were appearing at the corners of her mouth. "Not going to make me go through the day like this, are you?"

Without waiting for an answer, she walked to the door, pushed it open, and closed it behind her. He kept his weapon trained on its smooth steel surface until he heard the snick of the lock. Then he stepped to the door and pounded on it with his fist. "Hey!"

"What?" Her voice came through the panel, slightly muffled. "Can't a girl have a little privacy?"

"What are you doing in there?" It was already the longest conversation they'd ever had.

"I'm undressing, if you don't mind." He heard a soft thud, then another: her boots coming off. "What's on the agenda for today? Roast me on a spit? Drop an anvil on my head? Make me recite the log tables with my head in a bucket of wet cement?" He heard water running, and paper towels being pulled from the dispenser.

He wet his lips. "I think they wheeled in one of those gadgets you use to get a patient's heart started again."

"A defibrillator? Electric shocks again, oh goody. Sounds like the good doctor's running out of ideas." A pause. "So, Sarge. You married?"

He almost said _no_, but he felt his wedding band on his finger where the barrel grip rested in his left hand. A thought came to him: _you're still married. It will be a few more years before she gets tired of living with a moody man who disappears for days on end and can't tell her a thing about what he does for a living._ "Yes."

"Too bad. You're kind of cute. Not much boyfriend-bait around here. Alistair's already treating me like a retarded kid sister, and Dr. Seabrook won't waste a smile on me. I guess that leaves Randall." A short pause. "Eww."

He snorted; he couldn't help himself. He turned his back to the door and looked at the other three men, who regarded him curiously.

"Got any kids?"

"Two," he said automatically. Now he could hear water filling the sink.

"How old?"

He felt a moment's confusion. "Uh, nineteen and twelve, I think."

"You _think_? What kind of dad doesn't know how old his kids are?"

_The kind who isn't sure what year it is._ "Nineteen and twelve," he repeated, more firmly. "My boy's in the Marines. Girl's in junior high." He added, "She's taller than you."

"_Everybody's_ taller than me. It makes it hard to get taken seriously."

His stomach knotted. "I take you seriously."

"You sure do," she said softly. "We ought to talk about that."

He stood stiffly, waiting for her next words. The silence stretched. "Well?"

Nothing from the other side of the door but the sound of running water.

He turned and knocked on the door. "Hey." No answer. His heart thudded. "Hey!"

A faint splash and dripping sounds. "Hard to talk with your face in a sinkful of water, Sarge."

He unclenched and took a breath. He turned to face the room again; for some reason, her voice was easier to hear with his back to the door. "Don't do that again."

"Won't. Are you seeing a doctor?"

"What?"

"About your heart."

He felt his brows push together. "There's nothing wrong with my heart."

"If you say so. A malfunctioning pump's not something _I'd_ be in denial about, if I had one. Oh, you can't _see_ a doctor about it, can you? If they find out, they'll stick you behind a desk or something. That's no job for a warrior." She added softly, "But then, neither's this."

He shrugged. "It pays the bills."

"I've got a feeling it used to mean a lot more to you than that. What did you do before?"

"That's classified."

She scoffed. "As if _I'd_ tell somebody. How did you end up as my keeper? Tick somebody off?"

"It's important work." _And I'm getting kind of old to be humping in the boonies with the kids._

"I agree. But not the way you mean it."

By the time he realized her voice was too clear and close, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away, every nerve ringing like a fire alarm. He spun, and somehow his knee went out from under him, and he fell.

She reached for him before he'd fully hit the floor. His weapon was gone. _This is it._

One arm passed under his shoulders, saving him from banging his head, and lifted them as she crouched over him. The other rested flat over his heart, as if trying to hold it in his chest. "Sorry, sorry. Thought you heard the door open. _Breathe,_ will you?" The hand on his chest reached between his knees and came back up with his rifle. "Here. Here's your death ray thingie. It's okay." She placed it on his chest and smoothed his hair. "All better."

He gripped the weapon with both hands, but pointing it at her now seemed ridiculous. "I'm okay. Let me up."

"You're sure?" The blue eyes were warm with concern.

"Yes. Let me stand." He got shakily to his feet and looked pointedly at his rifle. "Why did you even give me this?"

She shrugged. "You needed _something_. I didn't have a teddy bear." She looked up at him. "Why are you so afraid of me?"

He swallowed. "You're not human."

"Human is as human does. And boy, isn't there a lot of room to move in _that_ box. Come on, Sarge. If they told some stranger there was a humanoid robot in this room, gave them a gun, and told them to come in here and shoot it, who do you think they'd draw a bead on?"

He flicked a glance at Dr. Seabrook, still poring over his notes, oblivious. She caught the motion. "Maybe. But I'm thinking not." She brought up her arms as if she were sighting a rifle. She walked with a measured step, backwards, forwards, crabbing sideways. She kept her upper body stiff, her eyes trained intently on some unseen object, swinging the invisible barrel around, moving as if on tracks.

Randall and Alistair, watching, laughed. He glowered at them.

She relaxed her stance and looked at him, head cocked. "They don't have any room to talk. None of you acts like a normal person, not when you're in the lab with me, anyway. Not human? You must have a better reason than that."

The manila envelope was in his hand. Again, he felt a moment of unreality: there wasn't a pocket on his uniform big enough to hold it, yet here it was. He passed it to her, and she pulled out the eight-by-twelves. He gripped his rifle as she looked at the first one, resisting the urge to sight on her again.

Her eyes widened in shock as she shuffled through the thin stack of enlargements. "It's horrible. Who _is_ that?"

He felt his brows gather. "It's you."

"No, it's not. I'm sure I'd remember." She looked up at him. "This is a stranger who resembles me. How often have you looked at these without noticing the hair?"

Another moment of unreality. "What?"

She stuffed them back into the envelope. "I don't want to look at them anymore." She handed them back to him, and they were simply gone, but somehow it didn't seem strange.

She turned to the table where the researchers stood. She tugged the day's lab schedule from Seabrook's hand, and he looked up, surprised, as if noticing her for the first time. She studied the top sheet, a checklist of questions to be answered. "Hm. Six tests today, huh? Negative result, negative result, twelve degrees Celsius, fourteen volts, negative result, eleven meters." She handed it back. "Now you don't have to bother setting up the equipment. What should we do with the rest of the day?"

Seabrook smiled at her like a teacher regarding a prodigy, and spoke for the first time. "Perhaps we could just talk."

He felt the dream, or reality, slipping away. "What about the experiments?"

She and Seabrook turned to him, smiling. The doctor slipped an arm around her waist. "The _experiment_ is over."

Tuesday September 19 2006  
Boulder

"Well, gentlemen, Mr. Monroe tells me you've been given your initial brief, and taken it rather well. I hope he's been able to convince you that you haven't been hired by a bunch of paranoids and mad scientists, at least." The bald-headed man gave a little smile to the group of new hires seated before the podium.

The men shifted in their comfortable chairs and gave up the barest hint of mirth to their new boss. _So this is the big man_, Dan thought. _Dr. Benjamin Ivery, head of Research Directorate, and one of the top five people in the organization. Reports directly to the boss lady herself. And he's come down from Olympus to deliver a lecture to a half dozen new grunts in his security force. Taking down Kat's little group of runaways must be kind of personal._

Then he remembered that Kat had mentioned Ivery's name in her tale of woe. He had been the school physician, and one of the people quietly running the Academy.

Monroe, in uniform but not wearing any rank insignia, was a fortyish black man with a little salt in his hair and moustache, and a manner that hinted he'd seen trouble and kept his head. He'd told them he was the tactical leader of their team, tasked with apprehending the 'Lynch cell,' the most dangerous – and unusual – bunch of subversives in history. He'd delivered a carefully spun and sanitized version of Kat's story, making her classmates sound like schizoid psychics with an imaginary grudge. Even without her face and voice in the back of Dan's mind while the team leader lectured, the story would have strained his credibility. The other men seemed equally skeptical.

"Later this week," Ivery continued, "we're going to show you a few things that we expect will convince you. For now, just consider that we're paying you to suspend your disbelief and remember what you're told." He held up a card deck. "Mr. Monroe thinks it best to teach you how to identify these people before we frighten you with proof of what they can do. Let's start with these. The fifty-two individuals on these cards represent about half the Specials we know about. Almost but not quite all are Academy students we've had the chance to observe at close range, if only for a short time. Their position in the deck corresponds only roughly to their position on the wanted list. Rather, they were arranged by their known associations and for ease of recall. For example." He held up a card. "John Lynch, number one on our list, and the Ace of Spades."

Dan found the same card in his deck and looked at it. John Lynch stared grimly out at the camera with one good eye, the right; the left, judging by the man's facial scars, had been gouged out of his head by a bear. More scars on his neck disappeared into the collar of his black shirt. Aside from his disfigurement, the waist-up shot showed a man in good shape for a forty-year-old. _This is 'Jack,' Annie's husband and Kat's rescuer._ The man looked like the distilled essence of trouble.

"Mr. Lynch is a Series Twelve Special, a former Director of Operations, and a career combat veteran besides; if you ever visit the training facility in Virginia and venture into their lobby, you'll see his name on a great many items in the trophy case. Very dangerous. The other aces are also Twelves, with similar backgrounds; the kings as well. But they don't even make the first page of our list. The four females on the Queen cards, however, stand just below Lynch in our interest." He held up four cards, one after another. "Caitlin Fairchild, Queen of Hearts. Anne Devereaux, Queen of Diamonds. Roxanne Spaulding, Queen of Clubs. Sarah Rainmaker, Queen of Spades." He fanned them out and gave the seated men a little smile. "You may hear the senior men refer to them as 'The Cheerleaders.'"

The chuckles this time were unforced, if still faint.

"I'm sure you've all gone through these cards, and wonder that your government should be so worried about what looks like a bunch of modeling academy students, most of whom aren't old enough to vote. I remind you that most of the world's soldiers are no older."

Heads nodded. The men seated with Dan had all worn BDUs in foreign lands full of armed hostiles. Most of his classmates were alums of the Sandbox, and others had faced child-soldiers in Africa or the Balkans or Central America.

"As for the other attribute I mentioned… It's not a coincidence. The Series Thirteens share some puzzling genetic traits quite distinct from their paranormal abilities, traits that are useful identifiers. They're all bilaterally symmetrical, which is an instinctive tag for physical attractiveness. They're naturally athletic in build; most of them are within ten pounds of actuarial weight, without a single example of an eating disorder. No acne or other skin disorders, either. A statistically unlikely number of them have double-recessive eye and hair colors, including the non-Caucasians, which makes them appear exotic and visually arresting." He paused and lowered his voice, almost as if telling something secret or embarrassing. "And at least some of them, male and female both, exhibit a… call it a psychic effect, that makes them seem extremely attractive sexually." He gave them an apologetic little smile. "Am I being clear on this?"

Jared, sitting next to Dan, spoke up. "Yes, sir. If you see a girl walking down the street who's just too hot to be real, she's the enemy."

The laughter lasted only a second, because Ivery was nodding, his expression dead serious. "Exactly. I know how it sounds, believe me. But if you see an exotic young woman who draws and holds the eye of every man who glances her way, check your cards. If you can."

An hour later, Ivery called a break. Most of the group headed for the cafeteria, but Dan found a little break area just off the classrooms and settled in at a table among the vending machines.

He slowly shuffled through his cards, looking for clues that supported either Kat's or Ivery's story. The kids did look like extras from a teen movie, and the older men on the ace and king cards looked as competent and dangerous as any he'd served with. It was easy to believe they were all part of some eugenics experiment.

He paused over Kat's picture: like most of the ones in the deck, it was a head-and-shoulders shot of her in the blue jumpsuit she'd described. She seemed smaller, and was wearing glasses with round rimless lenses strong enough to magnify her irises. It disturbed him that the only picture of her he could safely carry was a wanted poster. At the restaurant Saturday night, a girl with a digital camera had been circulating among the tables, taking commemorative shots of happy diners. As she'd smiled at their table and raised her camera, Kat had quickly turned away and he'd thrown up a palm to block the lens. The girl had left, apologetic, no doubt thinking Dan was cheating on his wife. He snorted at the memory.

Reminded, he reached into his back pocket and drew out his wallet. It contained two pictures of Adrienne: one of her holding a two-year-old Drew in her arms, glowing with pride as he grinned at her, fingers in her hair; and another of her alone, taken during his first leave as a married man. She was outdoors in a sundress, smiling just for him with her eyes sleepy-looking and full of promise. He remembered he'd been smiling and more than a little hot when he snapped the picture. Drew had been conceived during that leave, probably thirty minutes after this shot was taken.

He pulled the solo picture out of its window, intending to throw it away. But he felt uneasy about tossing it in a trash can where a stranger might pick it out, and tearing it up or defacing it seemed wrong, somehow. Feeling strangely protective, he returned it to his wallet. _I'll put it away somewhere when I get home._

He returned to the cards. He picked out the Queen of Clubs, a dark-haired girl with violet eyes and pinkish-purple streaks in her hair, who was trying not to smile as she faced the camera. _Roxanne Spaulding. Kat has a sister, a younger one named Roxy. The one who did Kat's makeup, and can't sleep in the dark._ He added it to the picture of Kat in his hand.

The next card was the Queen of Spades, a dark-eyed beauty, Eastern ancestry perhaps, with black hair cascading past her shoulders to disappear below the edge of the photo: Sarah Rainmaker. _Not Oriental,_ _Amerind. Another classmate, an enigma who likes girls and arguing with…_ It joined the other two in his hand.

He pulled out the Jack of Spades, Robert Lynch. _Bobby, the one who heats things up by touching them. _The resemblance to John Lynch was unmistakable, despite the older man's scars and the boy's fair coloring. He set it on the table, then riffled through the other jacks, looking for the 'Eddie' Annie had mentioned, but didn't find one.

He drew out the last queen: Annie, on the Queen of Diamonds. Her picture was different: apparently unposed and unaware of the camera, she was dressed in a button-front shirt and was smiling at something out of view. Other people were standing or walking in the background, a crowd scene. He wondered what IO knew about her that put her beside Kat on their wanted list.

He now held all four Queen cards in his hand. He shuffled them until Kat's picture came up and stared at it, wondering what she was doing now. Wondering if she was thinking of him. _Queen of Hearts. How apt._

Jared dropped into the seat across from him. "Cribbing? Or just admiring?" He shuffled through his own deck and picked out one of the Tens, a girl with blue eyes and thick blonde hair done up in a bun with a couple of sticks through it, chopsticks or knitting needles maybe, and a sultry smile framed with black or indigo lipstick. "Looks like a girl I dated in college. Once." He put it back and kept shuffling. "Dude. I think Ivery's been spending too much time in the lab. You don't have to dream up some Jedi mind trick to explain why guys can't take their eyes off these chicks. They're all lingerie models."

Dan wasn't so sure. Kat was stunning, but he'd known plenty of good-looking women, and he'd never struggled to behave himself around one the way he had with her. Ivery had said this 'succubus effect' was triggered and amplified by the Special's emotional state. He seemed to recall that it had been hardest to keep his eyes and hands off her when she'd been upset: frustrated over her performance at the horseshoe pit; shocked when she'd learned he was going to work for IO; riding an emotional rollercoaster as she'd told her story. It all seemed to fit too neatly.

A little worm of a thought entered his mind: _how much of what I feel for her is natural attraction, and how much Jedi mind trick? Does she know she's doing it? Can she turn it on and off?_ He pushed the thought aside. _No. She was uneasy about the possibility of having been maneuvered into a blind date. She wouldn't play head games._

"Shit." Jared was staring down at a card: the Queen of Clubs, Kat's sister Roxy. "I've _seen_ this one."

Dan carefully controlled his breathing and kept his voice casual. "Yeah?"

"For real. Last night, in San Diego. A strip club."

_I'd love to see you dance. Roxy would take notes._ He hung a look of amusement on his face. "That's amazing, man. Outstanding. You saw one of these girls stripping, and you recall her face."

"Not funny. She was dancing, but not stripping. Sunday's Amateur night. Girls come from all over for it."

"Arena's?"

"You know it?"

"Practically lived there for a while," he said, lying outright; he'd never set foot in the place after his wife took a job there. "My ex works there. Tall, dark blonde, big rack? Adrienne."

"Get _outta_ here!" The man's interest in Roxy was temporarily forgotten. Dan pulled out his wallet again, removed Adrienne's solo picture, and passed it over. For once, he felt something other than unease as the eyes of another man traveled over his wife's body. Finally, Jared handed it back. "Dude. Why would you kick _this_ to the curb?"

He stuck the picture back in and pocketed the wallet. "Let's just say strippers make great girlfriends and lousy wives and let it go at that." Having steered the conversation away from Kat's sister, he tried to think of a way to move it along and leave the subject behind.

He wasn't fast enough. Jared tapped the card with a finger. "Anyway. I brought my girlfriend there to compete. We got there a little late because she was having second thoughts and I had to talk her back into it."

_Why in God's name would a man put his woman up on stage naked like a slave on the auction block? And why would she stand for it?_

"This chickie was in the middle of her number. Still in her street clothes, and guys were swarming all over the edge of the stage. Ants to sugar, just like Ivery said. Soon as she finished, the crowd just fell on her. Security had to push em back. I don't know what I did, but my girl grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the building and didn't say a word to me the whole trip home."

Dan forced his fear down and marshaled his thoughts. "Jared. You had an Elvis sighting."

"A what?"

"You know. People see him all over the place. Self-service pumps in Omaha. The observation deck of the Empire State building. Pushing a mop on a cruise ship. Same thing happened in the Sandbox when we got our cards. They hand you the pictures of fifty-two strangers and tell you to start looking, and for a while, you see them everywhere." He looked at Roxy's card. "Easy to see how it happened this time. She looks just like a girl used to hit Amateur Night about three times a year. Let me see, what was her stage name?"

"Cheetah?"

He snapped his fingers. "Cheetah, right. Never took her clothes off, always walked away with it. Fits Ivery's profile perfectly. Except Spaulding's only seventeen. 'Cheetah's' been bringing the house down on Amateur Night for five years that I know of. And besides, I think someone who's been evading custody for three years is smart enough not to climb up on a stage in front of a crowd of strangers. Don't you?" He slid Jared's card back into the deck. "You'll probably think you've seen a dozen of these kids in the next couple weeks before you take a second look."

Jared nodded. "Yeah. I guess it'd be too much of a coincidence." He gestured at the deck. "Couldn't help noticing, just before I walked up. You were staring at the Queen of Hearts pretty hard." He grinned. "Got a thing for redheads?"

"Professional interest." Dan pulled Kat's picture out of the hand he'd dealt and pretended to study it. "I had dinner in Escondido Saturday. Swear to God, I think I saw this one at the restaurant."

Jared closed his mouth and reached across to punch him in the shoulder. "Fucker. Almost had me."

Escondido

As they pulled into the driveway, Roxy said, "Kat. Stop at the mailbox."

"Like we haven't done this every schoolday for the past four months," Kat grumbled, and stopped the car so her sister could open the rear door behind her and step to the mailbox mounted on a post at the curb.

As soon as Roxy opened the box's door, her face lit up, and Kat knew what she'd found. She felt her breathing constrict and looked away, only to find Sarah's eyes on her.

Roxy dropped back into the rear passenger seat. "Feels thick. Bet we all got a letter this time."

Kat sent the Charger down the drive.

"Caitlin." Sarah was still watching her. "You forgot to open the gate."

"Oh, yeah. Thanks." She stopped, backed to the post-mounted pad beside the driveway, and swiped her card to order the gate to roll aside. They passed through, and the gate rolled closed behind them. She dropped her passengers off at the back door and backed the car into the shade of the garage bay, watching Roxy enter the house with a large manila envelope.

Five minutes later, she jerked her forehead off the wheel at the sound of knuckles on the driver's side window. Anna looked at her anxiously through the glass. "Hon? Are you all right?"

"Sure. Just thinking." She reached for the door handle and got out.

Anna touched her hand briefly, but said nothing. Together they walked back to the house. As soon as Caitlin entered, she heard happy chatter coming from the great room at the other end of the hall.

"The one for you is the thickest yet, hon," Anna said quietly from behind her. "Don't you want to read it, at least?"

"No." Instead of walking down the hall, she turned to the stairs and climbed to the next floor. The sound of Roxy and Sarah comparing their letters was no less annoying here, coming down the second-floor hallway via the loft; just more blurry and echoey.

She couldn't decide what to do next. When she was upset, a good workout could usually clear her mind, but she was sure she couldn't do a routine right now without remembering sharing a bench with _him_. Likewise the pool, where she'd thrown herself at him and been gently rebuffed. And she didn't want to hole up in her bedroom, of all places, not alone with _these_ thoughts and feelings going through her. She felt trapped.

_A bath. A long, hot, relaxing soak, with a good book in my hands and a closed door between me and Luis's letter._

Ten minutes later, she was in the bathroom with her hair up and her clothes piled neatly on the counter, a fresh set folded on the toilet seat. She slid aside the frosted-glass doors closing the big tub off from the rest of the bathroom, and inhaled the steam that rolled out. _Just what I need. Half an hour under the jets with my nose in Mitnick's "Art of Deception," and I'll forget why I came in here._

But she'd scarcely settled into the water when the doorknob rattled. A shadow appeared in the small space between tile and door. "Hey!" Roxy's voice.

"I'm in here," she called.

"I know. But you're just in the tub, so how come the door's locked?"

"There's this thing called 'privacy.' Perhaps you've heard of it. And how do you know I'm in the tub?"

"You can smell the steam in the hall, for crying out loud. I've got your letter here." Her voice turned teasing. "It's extra thick, could be pictures. You want it or not?"

"Not," she said, trying to sound firm.

"I thought you liked him. What did he do to you?"

She sank into the water until it touched her chin, and she could barely see the bottom of the door over the tub rim. "Nothing. I'm just not into long-distance relationships, and I don't want to lead him on. Come on, Sis. You know I'm dating someone."

"Uh huh." A moment of silence, then, "So, you don't want the letter."

"No."

"You're not interested in what he's got to say to you."

"No."

"Fine. I am." The shadow under the door moved toward the loft before realization struck.

"_No!_" She launched herself out of the tub, slopping a gallon of water on the floor, and yanked the door open. "Give me that!"

Roxy was four steps down the hall, her finger under the flap of the half-open envelope. She waved it, backing away and grinning.

Kat stomped down the hall, reaching for it. "_Give_ it to me, or so help me I…" She couldn't think of an appropriate threat; she couldn't think of _anything_ but getting that letter safely away.

Roxy's eyes widened as she looked past Kat down the hall. "Uhh…"

She whirled. The hall was empty, but the door to the exercise-slash-music room was ajar. From inside it, Bobby said, "Didn't see a thing. Really." The door closed.

She slunk back into the bathroom. It took every gram of self-control she had not to slam the door, knowing it would probably blow right off its hinges and into the room across the hall if she did. But as soon as the latch snicked shut behind her, she brought her fists halfway to her chest and let out an animal sound of exasperation through clenched teeth. Then she stepped back into the tub, trying to retrieve her calm. She left the sodden book on the floor; she was sure she couldn't gather her wits enough to read anyhow.

She paused, standing in the calf-deep water, debating whether to just get dressed and forget about the whole thing, then sighed and lowered herself into the steamy tub. Before she reached for the jet controls, she heard a throat-clearing cough on the other side of the door. "Sorry." Bobby's voice.

"Sokay. Just don't get graphic for Eddie, kay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it." The shadow under the door broadened, and small sounds on the other side told her he was now sitting in the hall with his back to the door. "So, you okay?"

"Fine. Except I'm feeling a little weird talking to a guy while I'm sitting naked in a bathtub."

"That visual doesn't do much for my composure, either. Specially right now." She was sure he was smiling, and she felt the corner of her mouth tug upward in response. Then his voice changed as he said, "I never trusted that guy. Nothing I could put my finger on, I just didn't feel comfortable around him." His voice got lower. "Kat. If you ever need somebody to talk to… well, you know I'm here, right? About anything, seriously."

It hit her then. _He thinks we Did It. That it might be the reason he left, even._ A rush of tender feeling towards the boy on the other side of the door filled her, displacing her earlier heartache. She heard herself say, "I love you, Bobby." Quickly she added, "Like a brother. And no girl in her right mind discusses her love life with her brother. Shoo."

As he left, she mulled over what she'd said, and decided it was true. Her fuzzy and amorphous attraction to John Lynch's son had finally come into focus. Maybe it was because he and Sarah were a bona fide couple now, which put him forever out of her reach. Maybe it was Dan's appearance on the scene. _Or maybe, _she thought,_ I've just substituted two hopeless infatuations for a third._

A bulging envelope slid under the door. "I wasn't gonna open it," Roxy said through the panel. "I just wanted you to take it. He wrote all of us, you know. Even Bobby. But ours are half as thick, and he mentions you every third or fourth sentence, honestly. You really don't want to talk to him?"

"Told you. I'm seeing someone."

"So am I. So's Sarah. And Anna's married. We already started writing our letters back. It's a crappy excuse, Kat. Ask me, he's a better match for you than Ranger Dan anyway."

She was close to tears as she stared at the white paper rectangle on the tile. _He's perfect for me, except for one little detail: I can never have him._

-0-

"_Dude_. How long before they spotted you?"

Bobby pretended an interest in the TV show he'd just turned on, something about penguins. "Hard to say. Time sort of stood still. Couldn't have been long, though. I'm sure I didn't breathe the whole time."

Eddie shook his head. "Three seconds, that's all I would have needed to sketch her from memory. Your eye for detail is _disappointing_, dude."

"I told you before, bro. Seeing Kat naked is like staring into the sun. I might need glasses now."

"Totally worth it."


	4. The Truth, or Something Like It

Wednesday September 20 2006  
Boulder

Dan Grissom returned to the lecture hall after lunch thoughtful and a little shaken. They'd spent the morning in a detailed discussion of the Cheerleaders' escape from Westminster Mall, and their equally outrageous getaway later that day in the hills north of Miramar. He'd been overseas when it had happened, and was hearing of it for the first time. Others in his group had been Stateside, though, and remembered the cover story IO had spun. The extent of his new employers' reach thus revealed had made him more uneasy than watching his new girlfriend on video tossing a car.

Annie's performance that day had been far more unsettling. Watching her kill a man with her fist and maim several others on her way to the garage had made him reappraise her 'bedtime story'; he simply could no longer imagine her as a helpless victim breaking under torture, no matter how brutal.

_Don't bother_, she'd said. _Somebody beat you to it._ Dan wasn't so sure anymore that that 'somebody' was her husband or his father.

But he also remembered the warmth of her regard for Kat and Drew and his father, and the way she'd kissed her fingertips and touched them to his lips, a little girl's gesture. He decided there was a lot he didn't know about Annie Devereaux.

Monroe had told them that Anne Devereaux was a Special of unknown origin, a natural mutation, perhaps, or some other nation's experiment, designated a 'Twelve-five' for the similarity of her talents to the Twelves'. There was evidence of more like her, members of a paramilitary organization dedicated to wiping out IO on their way to God knew what final objective. Dan felt an odd flush when he realized he was weighing Monroe's story in one hand and the girls' in the other, looking for items that didn't add up.

They'd broken for lunch, and a couple of old hands had joined them. They'd turned out to be fellow members of the 'Lynch Mob' team, and one of them, Cummins, offered a first-hand account of the pursuit near the airbase. "It was the sweetest ambush I've ever seen – theirs, not ours. The chopper is stooping for its takedown pass when the van's taillights come on, and maybe two seconds later I see a flash that _isn't_ taillights. The chopper starts spinning out just as I hear the _boom_, and I know it's been hit. Then the front end of the 'Burban turns into a wall of flame and my jacket is smoking from shrapnel, and I know I'm a dead man. I hear another shot from their fucking cannon, and I have just enough time to realize it wasn't aimed at me before I hear the explosion behind me." The man shook his head. "I took some serious heat in Iraq and the 'Stans, brothers. Seen Humvees flying through the air all around me, and tracers coming through the windshield and going out the back window. This was worse. Those ragheads had swore before God they were gonna kill me, and gave it everything they had, and it wasn't quite enough. _She_ took out our whole force with five shots, and nobody needed more than a few stitches and some Neosporin. Well, except the chopper crew; they broke some bones when they hit dirt. Still. She could have killed us all, and a damn sight easier than what she did. But she just put us back in our playpen and drove away."

He'd gone cold. "Why do you keep saying 'she'? I thought nobody ID'd the shooter."

"It was the redhead, man, had to be. She likes big guns, and besides, who else could have held on to the fuckin thing?"

He'd tried to imagine Kat with a sniper rifle in her hands. "Why do you say she likes big guns?"

The second senior trooper had spoken for the first time – to his companion, not them. "They don't know about Chula Vista yet."

Cummins had grunted and kept silent for the rest of the lunch.

That afternoon, the new recruits were given an account of the 'encounter' at Chula Vista.

*

"So." Jared looked up from his dinner plate. It was the first word anyone had spoken in five minutes. "We've got a war, a real one right here at home, just ramping up. And it doesn't look good already."

Watts, another newcomer, frowned at him. "They say Operations is already fighting a dozen terror groups and keeping them all on the run."

"Yeah," Jared said, looking back down at the table. "Nuts planting bombs or training little private armies for Der Tag or dumping botulism toxin into reservoirs, crap like that. But those guys are _human_. Not frickin aliens from Planet Test Tube."

Dan kept his eyes down as well, unsure what his face might be giving away – unsure what he was feeling, actually. Pictures of the carnage at the industrial park pressed against the back of his mind, and the accounts of a machine-gun-toting Caitlin Fairchild taking down a whole squad of armed men mixed with his memories of her near tears on his father's couch and smiling like sunshine when he was appraising her in the restaurant.

"Could this all be a hoax, or a test maybe?" Another new guy, whose name escaped him somehow. "You can do a lot with special effects."

"You can." The man at the end of the table was named Anderson, Dan remembered; police background rather than military. "But what would be the point? It's obvious they want these people for _something_. What secret could be crazier than the story they gave us?"

Dan put a forkful of something in his mouth. _Right. What could be crazier than an ultra-secret government organization chasing down superhuman mutants? Except maybe learning that said organization wants to use them to rule the world._

Anderson glanced down the length of the table towards the entrance, and his face turned stony. "If you're looking for proof they're for real, here comes Exhibit A right now."

A fortyish man in glasses and a wheelchair rolled in, followed by a blonde in IO uniform. He headed straight to a nearby table filled with seasoned troopers. They didn't quite rise as he approached, but the deference they showed him left no doubt about his identity. While his aide headed for the kitchen, he spoke with the men in low voices, their manner easy and familiar.

Anderson said, "Colby, or I miss my guess."

"Like it could be anybody else," Cummins said as he dropped into the vacant seat next to Dan, plate in hand. "Five months in a wheelchair. God knows how many surgeries. I remember going through physical therapy after a busted knee. It was pure hell, but nothing compared to what they did to him. Nothing. Anybody else would've just give up and died, I swear. And he acts like he fell off his porch or something. Bastard's tough as tank armor."

"What's he doing here? They give him a job?"

"Are you kidding? He's Director of Operations now. Ivana appointed him as soon as he was off sedation, still in the hospital bed. Then she told him to pick his bonus. You know what the sumbitch asked for?" Cummins leaned forward and took them all in. "He asked to be put in charge of the hunt for the Specials. Talk about climbing back in the saddle. The guy's got brass ones, man."

"I don't know," Anderson said. "Somebody did that to me, I'd like to be there when they got taken down too."

Dan frowned. "So, are we working for Ivery, or this guy?"

"Ivery. She said she couldn't take it away from him. But Colby's definitely in the loop. There's not a door in SS doesn't open for him when he rolls up."

Colby and the man he'd been talking to glanced their way and exchanged a few more words. Then the Operations Directorate's alpha dog turned his chair their way and rolled over to Dan's table. "Morning, Carl. Good to see you're making the new fish feel welcome."

"Don't I always?" Cummins grinned.

"Just don't sucker them into any card games till they draw their second checks. They might have bills to pay." He rolled around the table, shaking hands and getting names. He insisted they stay in their seats. "Keeps us all seeing eye to eye." Dan noted that the Director had a firm grip for an invalid; he bet the man was taking his PT very seriously.

Colby's girl Friday arrived with her boss's meal, and pulled away an empty chair to open a space at the table directly across from Dan. The way she fussed over him as he settled in made Dan wonder how close they were skating to the edge of the no-fraternization rule.

Conversation was muted and sporadic while Colby took a few bites of his food and half a glass of water. Then he dabbed his lips with his napkin and said, "I'm sure before I rolled up, the topic of conversation was heavier than the Broncos' chances of making it to the Super Bowl, fellas. What was pulling your faces down?"

Anderson took a sip of his coffee. "Well, I for one am having a hard time digesting what we've been told. It's pretty hard to swallow."

"Until you've come face-to-face with them. I know I didn't understand what they were capable of, not really." Colby sipped his water while everyone tried not to look at him. "The real threat is the Twelve-fives. We don't know what they're after, but it can't be good. I only hope their efforts to recruit the Thirteens remain unsuccessful. I'm sure the kids just want to be left alone."

_Then why don't we?_ Dan felt Colby's eyes on him before he realized he'd spoken the words aloud.

Colby looked over the top of his glasses at him. "Because your boss is convinced we can't afford to, and he has the full support of Director Baiul. Maybe he's right. Regardless, Dr. Ivery's opinion is IO policy in this matter. I don't doubt he'll explain his reasoning to you before long." He returned his attention to his plate. "Just remember that even Dr. Ivery prefers them brought in rather than killed. Even the Twelve-fives, though I doubt any of _them_ will ever be taken alive."

Dan swallowed. "Sir, how sure are you about... there being more than one?"

"Dead certain. The one that nearly killed me wasn't Anne Devereaux. I don't know the Queen of Diamonds' position in the so-called Resistance, if any. Possibly just a liaison between them and Lynch. But she wasn't at Chula Vista." The man gave him a sharp glance, and Dan held his breath and concentrated on his plate until the moment passed.

He gathered his nerve for another question. "How do we do it? Find them and take them down, especially without hurting them?"

"After three years of defeat and failure, you mean?" Colby gave him a humorless smile. "Perseverance and luck. They only have to make one mistake, after all. Let them leave us one little bit of information we can build on, locate them, plan a proper takedown operation."

_Like knowing one of them was dancing at a strip club in San Diego last Sunday night, or eating at a restaurant in Escondido the night before. That Anne Devereaux will likely be visiting a certain address sometime this week. Caitlin Fairchild's phone number._

"Sir." The blonde at Colby's elbow glanced at her watch. "Your seven o'clock."

"Right. Thank you, Miss Carson." Colby backed away from the table. "Grissom, right? Dan. You guys are here because you're the best. If you can't find the Specials and bring them in, nobody else will."

Thursday September 21 2006  
Boulder

"Good morning, gentlemen." Ivery gripped the sides of the podium, looking unusually ill at ease. "I hope you slept well. I often have a difficult night before I'm scheduled to give this portion of the program. I always worry that I might fail to convince." He leaned forward, taking in each recruit.

Dan rested an ankle on a knee and tried to look comfortable. He recognized the look in the Doctor's eyes. He'd seen zealots before – fought them for his life, in fact. It was unsettling to realize he was working for one.

"When you were approached to join this organization, you were made some grand promises. You were offered a sackful of money, but if that alone influenced your decision to join us, you wouldn't be the kind of men we need. You were told you'd be engaging terrorists with unheard-of capabilities in a struggle for the future of America, and likely the whole world. I doubt this is the foe you were expecting."

Behind Ivery, a big flatscreen lit up with the card-deck picture of Roxanne Spaulding, Kat's little sister.

"Roxanne Spaulding, the Queen of Clubs in your deck. In this picture, she's three months past her fourteenth birthday. She's seventeen-and-a-half now, not quite old enough to vote or get a driver's license without parental consent. She's smart and sassy and you can't help smiling when you talk to her. Like many girls her age, she's preoccupied with her appearance. Her two biggest gripes about the Academy were the unflattering uniforms and the dearth of quality cosmetics. She constantly worried about gaining weight, even though she's no bigger than a twig."

Dan shifted restlessly as Ivery spoke, but he wasn't the only one. Ivery's description of their 'foe' was someone Dan and his colleagues joined IO to protect, not…

"She loves to dance and rollerskate, but she finds gym workouts a bore. She makes friends easily and can even talk intelligently to adults. She's an altogether engaging young woman. She's also potentially the most dangerous human being on earth, and I include Third World fanatics with nuclear weapons in that assessment."

He took a step from the podium. "How can that be? The talent she's shown is spectacular, but how is it a large-scale threat? And how can this young girl's presence at large be considered dangerous? To the best of our knowledge, she's living quietly and trying to fit in. Her only known crimes are assaulting a Federal officer and destruction of government property, both acts committed while trying to evade capture. Her prior incarceration at the Genesis facility could be construed as legal only by the broadest possible interpretation of the Patriot Act. How, then, do we justify our treatment of this girl, and our determination to place her back in custody?" He began pacing in front of the row of seated men. "Simply put: we dare not let her develop her potential further in an uncontrolled environment.

"We've glimpsed the present extent of her talent during her escape from the mall, and later at Chula Vista. If that were the limit of her potential, she'd still be a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. Imagine her being able to apply a six-hundred-gee negative force to an object. How long would it take to reach escape velocity? Come, gentlemen. High school math wasn't that long ago. About eleven thousand meters per second, and gee at about ten meters per second squared. Use your PDAs."

They crunched the numbers on their IO-issue handhelds while Ivery waited. Dan ran the numbers through three different ways, because he didn't trust his answer, but it came up the same every time. Finally, a man on the end spoke. "Less than two seconds."

Ivery nodded. "I won't ask you to calculate the altitude – it's less than seven miles. At Chula Vista, she manipulated a water tower weighing about forty tons. That's more than the Shuttle can carry into low earth orbit. Imagine a boulder that size launched from anywhere in the world on a ballistic path that terminates in a major U.S. city with virtually no warning. Now imagine America's enemies in the possession of such power."

The room grew still enough to hear the whisper from the AC ducts.

"And that, gentlemen, is only the beginning. Roxanne began to manifest her abilities just before her escape, as all the fugitives did. We know very little of that process, but we do know that once it begins, it usually progresses exponentially until it levels off in their early twenties. Her first indication of extranormal talent was the accidental application of about two-thirds of a gravity, negative, to her own body when she stepped on a scale." He stopped and gave them a little smile. "As I said, silly about her weight."

If he'd been hoping to get a laugh, he must have been disappointed, Dan thought. The doctor went on. "That happened on her fifteenth birthday. Later that same day, she applied almost a full gee negative to one of her guards, a two-hundred-pound man, also without knowing what she was doing. Now, going on eighteen, she can apply six-hundred-gee forces to objects, possibly ones weighing many tons. She's probably halfway through her development period, with the greater portion of her abilities still untapped. We don't have enough data points to accurately plot the curve, but there's a good possibility she may someday be able to produce pressures sufficient to fuse hydrogen atoms."

_That_ caused a stir. Ivery nodded. "Yes. She'll be able to produce atom bombs from toy balloons filled with hydrogen. Just set one adrift a few miles upwind of their target, and when it's in position…"

Anyone who'd sat tensely in a Humvee listening to a thousand men chanting "Death to America" with upraised fists knew exactly what such people would do, given access to an unlimited supply of nuclear weapons simply by coercing one young girl. "Fuck," Jared said softly.

"Oh, we're not done yet. I said the curve was difficult to plot from available data. It's just possible that she may someday be able to collapse matter entirely. Imagine it. She's sitting on her bed after dinner, listening to her Ipod and experimenting with her power, and accidentally creates a microscopic gravitational singularity." The doctor resumed his pacing. "Do we have any science buffs in the room? When does a black hole stop growing?" He paused. "Well? Anyone?"

The man at the end answered again. "When it runs out of mass to swallow."

"Exactly," the Director said softly. "If we leave little Roxy to explore her powers on her own, the Moon may someday be orbiting a baseball-sized black hole.

"Roxanne is perhaps the most dramatic example, but she's not the only Gen with the potential to destroy the Earth. Since the business at Chula Vista, weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere have been very unsettled and difficult to predict. In essence, we're still dealing with the fallout from Sarah Rainmaker's weather bomb. She probably already has the power to force climate changes that could collapse national economies and leave millions dead or uprooted. Those two are the runaways whose powers are best known. God knows what the others are capable of."

"Kat's almost at cutoff age," Dan said without thinking, then froze.

Ivery nodded, oblivious to the use of the Queen of Hearts' unmentioned nickname. "Plus, she's one of that small percentage of Specials who seems to manifest almost overnight to nearly their full potential. But we don't think she's shown her full capabilities to us. Also… there's a world of difference between 'almost' and 'at' when you're talking about exponential curves. We _think_ Caitlin's power to redirect energy is limited to objects she touches. But what if it's not? Or won't be, someday soon? Imagine if she could make airplanes stall and drop from the sky, halt or accelerate fission in a nuclear reactor, or knock over skyscrapers just by looking at them. As for that unknown upper limit….Imagine if she was at a great party and told herself she didn't want the night to end, and her Gen-factor obliged her by slowing the Earth's spin."

_Or if she's out at the beach and runs out of sunscreen. She probably burns easy. What if she looked up into the sky and wished the sun wasn't so hot…_ Dan shook his head, drawing a glance from Jared beside him.

Ivery resumed his pacing. "And there are worse hands they could fall into than those of criminals or religious fanatics. They're coming under the influence of a group of wild Specials with an unknown agenda. If that agenda includes a war on the 'normal' humans of the world, and they can recruit the likes of the Cheerleaders to their cause, the outcome of that war is seriously in doubt."

"War on humanity?" Anderson folded his arms. "That sounds insane."

Ivery stopped once again. "Yes. But the Series Elevens went insane almost to a man, and the Twelves seem to lose their grip on reality in direct proportion to the use of their power. The Twelve-fives are an unknown quantity, but the two we've tangled with certainly don't seem stable. At the risk of sounding alarmist, we're running out of time." Ivery looked at his watch. "Speaking of which. You've taken in rather a lot in a short time. I suggest we conclude the morning session a bit early. Unless someone has a question."

Half the men seated raised hands. One after another, Dan's teammates asked questions about the quality of the leads on the kids' whereabouts and details of the nature of the Twelve-fives. Dan felt a shift in the atmosphere of the room. All the skepticism was gone. Ivery had made Dan's teammates afraid to disbelieve. He felt like the last holdout on the jury. Worse – with his secret knowledge of the Gens and his tacit collusion in keeping them out of IO's hands, he was…

_Not a traitor. These men are ill-advised. Ivery is talking out his ass, all fear tactics and speculation. He doesn't know his quarry like I do._

_Doesn't he? Before I came here, I'd been acquainted with Annie for two weeks. I'd known Kat for two days. The others I've never met. Ivery saw them all and spoke with them for months. Hell, he's seen Kat in her underwear._

A darker inner voice spoke. _And if she's telling the truth, he's seen her naked. Naked and crying._

He mentally shook himself. He pushed self-doubt aside and stood with the others and filed out.

He stopped in the bathroom on the way. He splashed a little cold water on his face and examined his image in the mirror. _Dad said it. They're spending a week convincing us IO's position is the moral one – or the only reasonable one, at least. Their assessments of Kat and Annie and the others are conjecture and self-serving assumptions, nothing solid._

At the cafeteria, he found he was the last of his group to arrive. Two new visitors were going around the table shaking hands: a tall, crew cut man and a cute chestnut-haired woman about their age, maybe a little older. The man introduced himself as Jeffrey Adams, Monroe's second in command.

Jared raised his eyebrows. "Third in line wouldn't be named Hamilton? Or Jefferson, maybe?"

Adams didn't crack a smile. "Burr, actually."

"Actually not," the woman said. "It's something Polish that sounds half as long as it looks on paper." She offered Dan a hand. "Ferris Mars, Special Agent in Charge."

"Meaning she bird-dogs the Specials for us, then jiggles our elbows when we try to take them down." Adams still wasn't smiling, but his tone was a lot softer than his words.

"Meaning I run this circus, from the intelligence assets to receipting the prisoners at the holding area. Mr. Monroe gets his orders from me, and I try not to tell him how to carry them out - any more than necessary. I report to Mr. Brooks, who reports to Dr. Ivery, who reports to Director Baiul, all of whom are infamous micromanagers. You don't know how lucky you are that I'm here to run interference." She turned. "Got to go. I just wanted to meet my new guys. We'll talk more later, once you're up to speed."

When she was two tables away, one of the men commented, "Cute. Never took orders from a woman before."

"If you've got a problem with it, say so now." Adams hawkeyed the man. "She hunts in the field with the team, and she knows what she's doing. You wouldn't be the first man to underestimate her because of her looks, but you won't last on this team if you keep it up."

The man shrugged. "I don't care what she's got between her legs. Well, I do, but not like that. I'm just saying."

They dug into their food, keeping the conversation focused on business but light, dwelling on subjects like duty rosters and the frequency of travel. Dan wondered about Adams' defensive attitude towards his boss. He might be a rigid authoritarian who resented challenges to the chain of command on any grounds, but he didn't come across that way. Or he might have cast himself as her sponsor; God knew there were few enough women at IO in positions of authority, the Director's gender notwithstanding. Or he might be defending his boss out of personal loyalty; quite understandable if they'd worked together for a long time and got along. There were plenty of explanations other than the possibility the two of them were violating the fraternization injunction.

But he couldn't help noticing the way they'd avoided each other's eyes, even when they were talking to each other, and something about their verbal fencing had sounded staged. As with his dad and Annie, the signs were there. If Ferris Mars and Jeffrey Adams were going to bed alone, they were going to bed wondering. "You were at Chula Vista?"

Adams nodded. "And Miramar. They caught us by surprise both times. But sooner or later we'll catch them with their pants down."

"Doctor Ivery thinks we don't have much time to lose."

Adams shrugged. "It takes as long as it takes. We can't look for them any harder than we already are. Our challenge is to make sure they don't get away again once they're found. If we take them by surprise, I'm sure we can capture them alive and unharmed. If it drops into the pot, Research is working on weapons that'll at least give us a chance to take them down without killing them." Adams put his hands on the table and stared at them. "And if we can't capture the worst of them alive, well, that might be for the best."

Jared nodded. "This 'Dixie' sounds like a real badass."

Adams frowned and looked about to say something, but a chime sounded, announcing the end of lunch break. Conversation ended as the men rose for the afternoon session. Dan took his tray to the dish conveyor and wondered about that look, as if Adams had been about to disagree. _If not 'Dixie', then who?_

The session after lunch, Monroe acquainted them with some of Special Security's unique tools. He produced one of the restraint collars that disconnected a Special from his power, and demonstrated its effect with a volunteer. Dan cringed inwardly as Ivery put the metal band around Watts' neck and nodded to a technician with a remote.

Watts promptly fell down. He got on all fours, head wobbling, and tried to stand. He looked like a kid who'd been on the playground carousel way too long. "Wha... Ugh. God." He made gurgling sounds and fell over again, staring at his hands.

Ivery nodded to the tech again, and Watts rolled over and stared at the ceiling. "Fuck." He blinked. "Sorry, sir."

"Not at all, Mr. Watts. It's the commonest reaction afterward. Please note that Mr. Watts experienced the collar at about ten percent of maximum effect. It would be somewhat less dramatic on a Special; they have varying degrees of resistance. The collars' power is adjustable, so that it can induce anything from confusion to unconsciousness, even in a Special."

Watts rejoined the group, wiping his sleeve on his face. Dan asked, "What was that like?" The man only shook his head.

Monroe held up a device that looked like a retractable ballpoint. "Short-range weapon. Fires a jet of anesthetic at very high pressure. Aim for the face from ten feet, or put the business end against the subject's skin anywhere. Each press of the stud on the other end fires one charge; it carries a total of ten. I'm not going to demonstrate." That got a small laugh. "The agent is called 'Lethe,' very quick and effective, but tricky. Administered through the skin, one dose will put a person of any size down within a second, duration six to ten hours. Be very careful with it in enclosed spaces, and avoid situations where a buddy might catch a dose by accident. When we go up against a Special, we usually designate just one man at a time to use it. Don't risk giving anyone a second dose by accident. It's instantly fatal."

Dan didn't join in the dinner conversation. Instead, he ate quietly, letting the talk wash over him while he thought about Annie and Kat.

He wondered again about Annie's connection with his father. IO was the line between their dots, obviously, but Ivery had claimed the Twelve-fives had appeared recently and from nowhere, and IO had nothing to do with them. But his father had had dealings with Annie in the course of his duties, dealings that had strained his conscience. Dan imagined for a moment being a guard at the Darwin Academy, surrounded by these bright young kids who were your unwitting prisoners. All the 'national security' pronouncements in the world wouldn't make it easy to dope them and cage them in the basement.

_She was one of my victims_, Dad had said. _I watched it happen. I thought there was a good reason for it._

_A similar experiment? If he was part of it when he came home, it would have been maybe eight or ten years ago. Annie would have been a kid, early teen, maybe even younger. My God, that's why he didn't recognize her. He watched those monsters torture her, an ordeal she compared to being run nearly to the point of death and then eaten alive. An earlier attempt to break Genactives to their will, a clumsier one._

"Dan. Something wrong?"

"Eh?" Jared was looking at him strangely. "No. Why?"

"You looked like you just bit into something rotten."

He couldn't think of anything to say, so he just shook his head and applied himself to his meal until the man lost interest.

Annie's savage determination to avoid capture with her family, and her unconditional opposition to IO, made perfect sense now. He needn't postulate some Gen-induced mental instability. The other known Twelve-five, Dixie, had shown equal savagery, though, and her backstory was a blank. But if she'd been a 'guest' in some IO basement, or known someone who had, well, he knew some perfectly rational people who'd go off the chain just hearing about something like that.

His thoughts turned to Kat. Her story had burned in his mind as he'd watched Watts' senses twisted in the grip of the restraint collar. He recalled her face and voice and posture as she'd told it, and wondered how deeply it had marked her. The eyewitness accounts of Chula Vista had described her as a grimly competent gun-toting Amazon, who'd led the Resistance team that smashed the industrial park and took on both an army of SS and a reaction force of Razors, who were reputed to be very nasty customers, and stamped them into the dirt, just for the opportunity for some payback on a double agent scheming to get them captured again.

He contrasted that with the girl who'd looked over the backyard fence with solemn eyes, listening to a story about the horrors of war. He recalled Cummins' story of the ambush at Miramar, where the cannon sniper had taken such care to minimize casualties among her pursuers. He remembered how deftly Kat had avoided a confrontation with Adrienne, even making a friend of her for his sake. It almost seemed as if Kat, like Annie, was two people.

That brought to mind another thought. Kat had told him she wasn't going to see Adrienne at work. But her sister was there the very next night, almost certainly with her. Had Kat made a friend of his ex for his sake, or for some other purpose? He pushed his plate away and stood. "Phones working yet?"

His father's phone rang so many times he almost hung up, but it clicked and his dad's voice replaced the ring tone. "_Hello?_"

"Me, Pop. Where were you?"

"_At the front door. Drew's sitter is here. She took him to the playground and managed to wear him out._"

_Aha. _"Heard from Marie?"

"_She came with,_" his father said dryly. "_I think they're joined at the hip. You want to talk to her?_"

He swallowed his first answer. "No, that's okay." They had a lot to talk about, but not over a phone line monitored by a computer that could possibly ID her voice. "We can talk this weekend when I get back, if she's free."

A brief exchange off-phone. "_She says, you pick the time, she picks the restaurant. The pixie just blew you a kiss._"

_No doubt with the same fingers she crushed Mike Hale's balls with._ _The same ones she stuck in my father's pants a week ago. _He swallowed. "You sound a little tired, Dad."

"_Been going to bed alone, if that's what you're getting at. If the girls weren't a room away, I wouldn't give that remark a response. But I've been waking up at night. Weird dreams. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something. What about you? You resting easy in there, son?_"

"I'm going to bed with fresh questions spinning around in my head every night. But I'm hanging in. I just need to see all you guys soon."

Friday September 22 2006  
Boulder

Hoping for a little solitude at lunch, Dan decided to forego the canteen for the classroom break area. But when he rounded the corner, he saw one of the two little bistro tables was already occupied. Jeff Adams and Ferris Mars looked up casually from their coffee cups, but Ferris's left hand and Jeff's right were resting on the table a foot apart, and it wasn't hard to imagine their fingers twined together just before they heard his footsteps. "Dan," Ferris said. "How's training going?"

He sat at the other. "Okay. I've been learning how to take down superhumans without hurting them. Heady stuff, very empowering. All that our methods need to work perfectly is for nothing to go wrong." He flicked a glance at Adams. "That spray hypo gadget is a pitbull off the chain. If we don't kill one of ours with it in a raid, I'd count it a victory. And even if the Special is the only one who gets in front of it… I've seen people killed by stun guns in a heated moment. I wouldn't want to be the guy detailed to carry the Lethe dispenser."

Ferris reached for her cup – with her right hand, Dan noted. "I have to agree, but it's the most effective tool we have, and we can't dispense with it. No pun intended. Used to be, we issued one to every agent hunting Gens in the field, before we realized a team so armed might be a greater danger to each other than the Gen. It's probably a good thing a squad with Lethe dispensers never went after a Special together. Especially a female." She tossed the empty cup into the wastecan. "Two agents was disaster enough." She stood. "I'm off to pack. Headed out of town for the weekend. Unless something breaks, I'll see you guys Monday." She didn't give Jeff a glance, but Dan was fairly certain that, wherever she was going, she wasn't going to be alone.

Then his attention drifted from speculations about his bosses' love life to Ferris's words. "What is she talking about?"

Jeff was watching Ferris walk down the hall. He might have had any number of reasons for doing so: idol worship, comradely concern, caution before speaking in earshot of a superior, or simple admiration of her cute little butt. "Yeah, well, she shouldn't have dropped that little comment and bailed without explaining, but that case digs at her." When Ferris disappeared around a corner, Jeff turned to him. "I know you guys traded jokes over Ivery's description of I/S Effect. Every new class does, at least till they meet Nicole." He took a sip of his coffee. "But I'm here to tell you, it's real, and it's damned dangerous. It cost us a couple agents once, and lost us a Special we thought was in the bag."

"Yeah?" He stared into his cup as he stirred his coffee, pushing down a feeling of foreboding.

"Yeah. You heard about Westminster and Miramar and Chula Vista. None of those was the first time we flushed Caitlin Fairchild and lost her. Just a couple months after the breakout, we had her surrounded in New Mexico, on top of a frickin mountain no less. She waylaid two agents riding fence along the search perimeter. Well, one, actually. He was pumping gas while his partner hit the bathroom. Julius Gierling was his name. She just walked up on him… and turned him. Took less than a minute. He murdered his partner to be with her."

"No," he breathed.

"Yes. I watched it on the gas station video. She came up behind him just as he was hanging up the nozzle, backed him up against the pump, and snogged him. When she let go, he was her slave. As soon as his partner came out of the bathroom, he Lethed him. Double-tapped him while she watched, and then drove off with her. An hour later, they stopped at a motel for three hours while she paid him."

His gut tightened, and the coffee came back up into his throat, burning. He coughed. "That seems… incredible. Out of character."

"I saw the room. By all the evidence, it was quite a party." Jeff rolled his cup between his hands. "He called us the next day. Ferris thinks he'd got what he wanted from her, and he was ready to come back home. But I think he was fighting it. The Effect, I mean. There are ways. It's weakest when they're sleeping, and he dropped us a clue while she was taking a nap in the back seat. It weakens with distance, too. He called from a gas station restroom while she waited in the car. He left his phone on, so we could track them and listen in. The way she talked to him, you'd have thought she was falling in love with him. They reached their rendezvous point an hour later. As soon as he shut off the engine, she murdered him with his own Lethe dispenser. Emptied it into him, like killing him once just wasn't enough. You see, he was the man who recruited her to the Academy."

_No. She wouldn't do that, you must be mistaken._ His throat was too tight to form the words. His lips parted, but nothing came out.

Jeff, staring at his cup, didn't notice. "After Chula Vista, I took a look at her dossier from before she was recruited. Someone told me she hadn't been capable of an unkind word back then, and I'd have to agree. You don't hear more than whispers about the training at the Academy, but I know it wasn't all schoolwork, and I'm pretty sure it was rough. Ferris knows more, but she won't tell. But whatever happened there, it didn't create the person we're trying to catch; it just brought out something that was already there, waiting to come out. The Elevens all went crazy, and most of the Twelves, too. I was at Chula Vista. The Twelve-five on their team was bughouse, a bomb waiting to go off. And only a very sick puppy could have treated that guy Hale the way Anne Devereaux did. A witness at Chula Vista quoted one of the Thirteens as saying that being stressed or threatened makes them crazy. Said it was a side effect."

Dan remembered Kat's description of her going violently crazy in her cell. _But, hell, who wouldn't have?_

Jeff tossed back his last swallow of coffee. "I talked to Fairchild about Gierling at Chula Vista."

"Say what? You _questioned_ her?"

Jeff raised his eyebrows. "Wasn't exactly an interrogation. I was chained to a post at the time, and she was in a hurry to be somewhere else. We exchanged a couple words, is all." He looked blankly at the wall. "She told me Gierling deserved everything he got, and more." He crumpled his cup and tossed it in the wastecan, as Ferris had done. "I used to hate her for what she did. Now I almost feel sorry for her. She didn't ask to be the way she is. But I'm more determined than ever to bring her in and safe her before she can hurt anyone else. And when we do, none of us is going to spend a second alone with her, even with her collar on."

San Diego

Dan's flight touched down in San Diego around nine PM, hours after dark. He peered through the glare from the lights all around and into the gloom between, looking for his ride home. He'd called his father from Boulder with his flight's arrival time, and had expected his dad to be waiting in his Jeep, or maybe Dan's clunker sedan if Drew was with him. But neither vehicle was anywhere in sight. He was reaching for his cell phone when a familiar coal-black Charger detached itself from the darkness and rolled up to the curb, engine rumbling. The door locks clicked open.

It was damn strange, he thought, the way his ass puckered and his loins stirred at the same time.

He bent to look through the passenger window and saw Kat, alone in the car, looking back with a searching expression. Then her face blanked the way Anna's had when she'd thought he was about to ask unpleasant questions in the hallway of his father's house. She turned to look over the dash.

He opened the rear door and tossed his bag in, then got in front. The car was rolling away from the curb as he was snapping his seatbelt together.

"Your dad is waiting at home with Drew," she said to the windshield. "Andy insisted I pick you up. I think he wants us to talk before you get home." She gave him a quick glance as she stopped at an intersection. "Rough week?"

She was heartbreakingly beautiful. He wished desperately to know if his perception was because of love or some freaky mind-control. "Very. A guy in my class spotted your sister at Arena's Sunday night."

She turned to stare at him. Her eyes were huge and shining, twin moons whose gravity pulled him irresistibly. He leaned towards her, and only the seatbelt kept him from sliding over to her. His hands lifted off his thighs. He balled them into fists and forced them back down. Dimly, he heard a horn blaring impatiently behind them.

Feeling as if his toes were sticking over the edge of a precipice, he took a breath. "I convinced him it was a false alarm. He won't say anything."

She seemed to shrink in his vision somehow, still beautiful, but now leaving some room in the universe for other objects. She pulled out smoothly into traffic. "Daniel, you just scared the spit out of me."

"Sorry." _But now I know it's involuntary, emotionally triggered. If I'm careful, I can control her power better than she can. _"I was scared, too, at the time. And more than a little surprised."

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't exactly lie in the restaurant, but I wasn't entirely truthful either. I asked her about you in the ladies' room, and she promised me a talk if I'd come to the club Sunday."

"And what did she tell you?"

She smiled at the windshield. "Not to let you drive." He felt a wave of pleasure, and an attraction to her that was different from the helpless desire he'd experienced earlier. "And that I'd be perfect for you." Her cheek under her eye tinged pale pink.

"She said that? Really?"

She nodded and looked his way finally. "All I have to do is follow a few simple rules. Never lie to you, stay on your dad's good side, and _never_ become a stripper."

He grinned briefly at that, and the spell was broken. He was in the company of an exceedingly desirable female friend, no more or less. _As long as I don't upset her. Can't touch her while she's in a mood, either; physical contact magnifies the effect. _He remembered how unbearably strong the urge had been to take her in his arms as she'd told her tale on the couch with her hand in his and her eyes brimming. "Sounds easy enough."

He decided against asking her about Julius Gierling while they were in a car. It seemed a good way to get in a wreck.


	5. Strange Conversations

Friday September 22 2006  
Escondido

After Drew had been fussed over and played with and sent to bed, and Caitlin had left with a promise to call next afternoon to finalize their dinner date, Dan and his father had talked over his week in Boulder over a pot of coffee. Dan had repeated the 'official' version of Genesis and IO's rationale for hunting them down. His father had told a few stories of missions with Gen Twelves he'd known, including one where an Odd Squad grunt had started babbling and been hustled away by his teammates, never to be seen again.

Dan looked across the table at his father. "When am I going to hear you and Annie's backstory?"

"When she's ready to tell it with me. She made me promise. When you do, I don't suppose you'll look at your old man the same way." The old man rose and bid him goodnight.

Sleep held no appeal, even though the kitchen clock read nearly three AM. Maybe it was the half pot of coffee, but he didn't think so. He'd been on an emotional rollercoaster for a week, with the biggest hill still to be climbed. With Kat's intoxicating presence removed, his head was just too full of thoughts to lay on a pillow.

He drank more coffee and thought about Kat's description of her recruiter, 'Mr. Gierling', who'd shepherded her into the Academy. He couldn't imagine a second meeting between them being pleasant, but Dan couldn't imagine her behaving as Jeff Adams had described, either. Again, it occurred to him that the Caitlin Fairchild of Jeff's acquaintance and the Kat he knew were two very different individuals.

Then an image came to mind, of Kat in her cell, talking to her reflections as if they were other people. _What did she call them? 'Creepy alter egos'?_

_Stop it. You're no psychologist. You don't have a clue if such a thing is possible outside of popular fiction. Ask her about him, and see what she says._

_But make sure you do it far from innocent bystanders, just in case._

Now the clock read three. Adrienne would be getting off work right now, probably driving home. How many times, when he'd been home on leave, had he sat just like this in the dead of night, waiting for her to come through the door? In retrospect, the habit hadn't been a good one. Meeting her as she came in began to turn into an examination, looking for God knows what before even saying hello, and she'd noticed. By the time she'd told him she was leaving him, the early-morning ritual hadn't even included a kiss.

He removed her pictures from his wallet and laid them on the table in front of him. Then he opened his phone and punched in her number.

She picked up the phone on the third ring. Her voice was high and alarmed, and she spoke almost too fast to follow. "_Danny? What is it? Is it Drew? Is he all right?_"

_I haven't called her since I got back from my last tour, and now I'm calling her in the middle of the night. Of course she's tripping._ "Calm down, Adrienne. Nothing's wrong. I just thought this would be a good time to call. I know you're up." He added lamely, "How was work?"

"_Profitable,_" she said dryly. "_I know you don't want to know about my workday, and you don't sound drunk. What's on your mind, Danny? That had to be discussed in private? Hold on."_ A pause, then the sound of a siren dopplering past. "_Ambulance. Usually happens once a night on this road. People in this neighborhood have strange notions of late-night entertainment. I get pulled over by the police a couple times a month, too. The car draws attention, I suppose._"

He realized he didn't know what she was driving now. Something expensive, he was sure, probably an import, and almost certainly a convertible; she loved her ragtops. He remembered her hot defense of one of her choices: _Buying a Ferrari isn't extravagance, it's good sense. I'll drive that car for three years, and when I sell it I'll lose less on it than you will on that piece of crap you drive. _

He returned his attention to the phone. "It's not just the car," he said, thinking of her tooling down the road with her hair floating in the breeze. "It's you. I'm sure the local cops know your ride, and pull you over for a better look. Bet sometimes he stands next to the car looking down at you with your license in his hand, wrestling with his conscience over asking you out."

"_Danny, that's the closest thing to a pickup line you've said to me in years. Kat must be getting to you._"

_If only you knew._ "On that subject. You talked with her Sunday at work."

The honey disappeared from her voice. "_I hope you're not trying to pick her friends. Or mine._"

"No. But… Adrienne, I don't care what you said about me. But I'm worried for her. I need to know what's on her mind."

"_Enough to ask me, even?_" She didn't seem angry, just amused. "_You must want her bad._"

"I don't know what I want," he said roughly. "I don't know if… we'd be good for each other."

Her voice softened. "_Is it the new job?_"

The world got a lot quieter. The refrigerator kicked on, startling as the snort of a truck diesel. "What did she tell you?"

"_Relax, Danny. If you told her any secrets, she didn't pass them on to me. She just told me you were working for rival firms who'd like to put each other out of business. But I don't have to be a genius to guess that the 'firms' aren't exactly private sector. Truth to tell, I talked longer with her sister. She finds my career intriguing._"

"I heard she got on stage and danced." _Let her think Kat told me, that she told me everything._ Diplomatically, he added,"Sounds like she did good."

"_She's a natural. If you allow that what I do for a living requires some sort of talent and not just a lack of shame._"

"Ren." _How long has it been since I called her that? _"I didn't call to insult you or start a fight. Really."

"_No, you called me at three AM to cry on my shoulder about your new girlfriend._" But her voice was light again.

"Do you really think we'd be good for each other, or were you telling her what she wanted to hear?"

"_You've got a chance, I think. But you'd better be careful if you want to keep her. She likes you, maybe too much for a girl who hasn't got to the second date yet; I don't think she has much experience with men. There's no telling what she'd be willing to do for you if you treat her right. But I've got a feeling she won't put up with a man who mistreats her in any way._"

He thought of Julius Gierling. "I think you're right."

"_Did you get your kiss?_"

"Not really. More of a cousin-kiss." It was indescribably weird, discussing Kat with Adrienne like this. It was equally weird to realize there was no one else he could talk to who'd understand. "But we held hands. Maybe tonight."

"_Such restraint. But I think it's the right strategy. You take it nice and easy, Danny. She's skittish about men. Don't rush her._"

_They stopped at a motel for three hours while she paid him_, Jeff had said._ By all the evidence, it was quite a party._ "I just wish I could be sure about her."

"_Once burned, twice shy? It's not like you to lack confidence about anything. It's a side of you I've never seen."_

He looked at the pictures on the table. The smoky stare in the sundress photo still stirred him, even though he was sure she'd offered it to ten thousand other men while she was onstage or squirming naked in their laps. But the way she looked at her son in the other photo, he thought, was something she'd never share with another man. "Drew misses you. You should see him. Are you open Sunday? Before work, I mean?"

Silence.

"Adrienne."

"_Give me a minute._" Her voice was tight, strained. She sounded stuffy, too, like she was fighting a cold. He suddenly realized she was crying. _She hasn't seen Drew or spoken to him for two weeks, since she surrendered him to Child Services with a deputy sheriff at her elbow._ When she came back on the line, her voice was crisp. "_Well. Looks like my appointment calendar's open from breakfast until a couple hours after dinnertime. Where would you like to meet? Not your father's house. Please._"

"No. Mine, if it wouldn't make you uncomfortable." A whisper of doubt entered his mind, a little voice suggesting that _maybe_ he shouldn't have been so adamant about sole custody.

"_I wouldn't mind, but… I'm afraid Drew might misunderstand. Wouldn't want him thinking I'm coming back home, you know? How about a park somewhere?_"

He nodded into the phone. "Unless it's raining. But we'll come up with something. Call in the morning, and I'll put him on the phone."

"_Kay._" Her voice wobbled. "_I'm home now. The lights are on. Alan's up._"

His jaw tightened. _Jealous?_ "Does he kiss you at the door?"

"_He won't notice I'm home until I knock on his office door._" Her voice echoed, and the idling engine grew loud and shut off, so he knew she'd pulled into the garage. "_Don't get me wrong about him. He works way too hard, but he's good at his work and people are always coming to him to add to his load. He's a nice guy, when he takes the time, and he's great with Drew. He didn't meet me at the club, and he's never watched me dance; I could be a realtor or a hairdresser, it'd be the same to him._"

_So very unlike me, _he thought. "I'm sure he likes showing you off at parties."

"_I'm sure he gets stroked by his business associates about me. But he invites me to all their little get-togethers, and I've never been snubbed or leered at when I arrive on his arm; they all treat me with respect, even the wives. I'm sure he had something to do with that. He remembers birthdays and anniversaries, too. But I don't occupy a very big place in his day-to-day._"

The phone felt heavy in his hand. "You should be used to that by now."

She scoffed. "_You being gone so much probably kept us together._" Her voice turned playful. "_But the reunions were always nice. Making up, too, sometimes._" He heard a click as her car door opened, accompanied by a chime that shut off as the door thunked closed again. "_It's been good talking to you, Danny._"

"Yeah," he said. "It's been nice talking to you too."

Saturday September 23 2006  
Escondido

"Not what I was expecting," Dan said, "but nice. Very nice."

"I thought it might be a nice changeup after our last meal." Kat had picked him up at his father's house with a large picnic cooler on the back seat, and had driven them to Beliz Park, a popular recreational area in the heart of Escondido.

He looked over the wooded setting Kat had picked out for their second dinner together as he tried to avoid staring too obviously at his host. The temperature was in the low seventies, and she was dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a pink tee, somehow managing to look innocent and flat-out sexy at the same time. He couldn't help admiring her figure as she bent over the table, visible from the thighs up, while she set up the food she'd brought. "You come here a lot?"

"I don't go anywhere regularly." She pulled cutlery and containers from the big cooler. "It would be a security risk. But I come here as often as I can. I hope you like cold chicken. And roast beef. And a loaf fresh from the oven, already sliced and buttered. And cheese and sliced fruit and chocolate cupcakes and… And… good grief, no wonder this thing was so heavy. Anna packed enough to feed ten people. There must be a billion calories in here."

"She does like to send them away from the table happy."

"Oh, _so_ right."

Something in her tone pulled his eyes up to her face, and he saw two spots of color on her cheeks. "What?"

"Remind me after we eat, and I'll tell you."

They dug in. As he started on his loaded plate, he admired the way the afternoon sunlight slanted in among the trees, dappling the table and kindling fire in Caitlin's hair. He kept his eyes on her face and tried to converse while following every flutter of her lashes and movement of her lips.

She shifted, and her bare leg bumped against his thigh. "Sorry."

Without thinking, he said, "I'm not," and pushed down a sudden image of those mile-long legs locked around his hips. To cover, he said, "This was a great idea. Sunshine and fresh air are just what I needed."

She looked down at her plate. "What was it like?"

_Aha. No wonder I can't keep myself in hand._ He dabbed his lip with a paper napkin. "Locked down tight, like a proper secret base. There are a lot of interesting people there." He took a sip from his water bottle. "Francis Colby, for a start."

She leaned forward. "How is he?"

_She's concerned about him? After leaving him for dead?_ "Impressive. Very sharp and energetic. He's in a wheelchair still, but I get the impression he won't be in it forever. I also get the impression he'd call off the hunt for you if it was in his power." Carefully he added, "Except for Annie and the others like her."

She nodded and attacked a piece of chicken. His mouth went dry as she licked her shining lips and pressed them to a drumstick. "He's an old friend of Mr. Lynch's. I don't think that trap at Chula Vista was his idea, but he was the bait, and Dixie took it personal. I don't think Anna's sisters are very understanding about mixed loyalties."

_And what about you?_ He took a quick look around. There were plenty of people in sight, but none close; this looked like the best opportunity he was likely to get. Keeping his voice as neutral as he could manage, he said, "Kat, we need to talk about Julius Gierling."

He wasn't sure what sort of reaction to expect, but he didn't expect the one he got. Her face closed up, and her mouth thinned. "That waste of protein. No wonder you've been so strange." Then the world tilted slightly as she went on, "I can imagine the stories he's told you about me. But you have to realize one thing about Julius, Daniel. He's a gifted and enthusiastic liar, and I'm sure his pride needed some salving after what I did to him. What did he tell you?"

"Ah, we didn't meet, actually." He studied her posture and hands. "He's dead."

"Oh." A pause. He watched the tension in her hands fade. "How?"

_He deserved everything he got, and more._ "I'm not sure."

"Did he have any family? I don't remember a wedding band, and I can't imagine him with a wife."

"I don't know. But there are still plenty of stories about the two of you in New Mexico."

His field of vision shrank to a tunnel focused on her face. The birds stopped singing as she stared down into her bottle of apple juice. "It was the closest I've ever come to being caught. They shot a _plane_ down to get to me. They were right on my heels until I ran into Julius. I don't know if I'd have got away without his help. But I can't feel grateful. I know he only pretended to help me so that I'd lead him to Mr. Lynch."

He lifted his water bottle to his lips and took a swig, then left it there to mask his lower face. "The stories usually mention the motel room you rented, and a different reason for his cooperation."

She _grinned_. "Pfft. As if." He felt a sudden disorientation, as if his middle ear had gone wonky. "We took turns in the shower and racked out. He didn't even get under his covers. We talked for a while instead of sleeping. I think he would have liked to; maybe it's why he suggested the stop. But he didn't press, and we were back on the road in three or four hours."

_I saw it on the gas station video. She backed him up to the pump and snogged him. When she let go, he was her slave_ As she spoke, he felt whipsawed from one emotional state to another, oscillating from moonstruck fascination to cold calculation and back again. He was ashamed to realize she didn't give a second's thought to whether he believed her. _But is it trust, or is she that sure of her grip on me?_ He hated his doubts of her and his mistrust of his feelings for her with equal force. This was a time when he'd have gone to his father for advice, but Dan wasn't sure of his dad's objectivity on a subject that might touch on his relationship with Annie because of that dark secret between them, and, frankly, his infatuation with her.

He snapped out of his fog when he realized Kat had asked a question. "Sorry. What?"

"I said, 'Do you know what happened when he woke up? I was hoping for a Grade-A hangover, at least. Not nice of me, but he wasn't a nice man."

He blinked. "Hangover? From what?"

"He had a kind of spray hypo that looked like a ballpoint; I guess they all did. It carried ten one-hour doses of some knockout concoction. Julius gave his partner a double dose to get him out of the way for a couple hours. He said he'd wake up sick from it. When I left him, I put a penful into him. I figured making him spend a couple days in the bathroom was going easy on him, considering what he was going to do to me, the jerk. Scuse. Shouldn't speak ill of the dead, I suppose." Her smile disappeared. "Dan, you okay?"

He nodded. "Think something went down the wrong way."

"Want to take a walk?"

"Uh, sure. Put the stuff in the car first?"

She stood. "If somebody steals our food, they probably needed it more than we do. Come on."

The path wound through small woodlots, crossing mixed-grass meadows between. A number of joggers shared the trail, and Dan couldn't help noticing the way oncoming men slowed as they approached. He doubted any of them noticed that the redheaded goddess even had a companion, he thought sourly. A quick look over his shoulder showed a parade of walking men, and that was when he realized they'd only been passed by women as they'd ambled down the trail.

An uncomfortable yet familiar feeling stole into him, and he pushed it back down. _It's not like with Adrienne. Kat isn't cultivating lust like a crop so she can collect a harvest of cash from it; she can't help the way men react to her. I'm not sure she even realizes. _"Uh, Kat."

"Hm?" She was watching a handful of birds take flight from a tree across the meadow, oblivious to her admirers.

"Nothing." He reached for her hand and braced himself for a sudden surge of lust, but it didn't come. She curled her fingers around his, and he felt warmth travel all through his body. "You're, ah… How's Annie getting along with my dad?"

She smiled at the obvious change. "Good. I double-dated with Drew Wednesday night, dinner at home again. They sent us into the yard before dinner, and when we came in to eat, they were kind of quiet. They kept making arcane references to stuff they'd done together. It was like Drew and I were hardly there for them. But they behaved themselves. Anna didn't get any more handsy than normal, and we left after Drew went to bed." She swung their clasped hands gently, at peace with the world. He wondered how often she relaxed enough to be a young girl with no burdens on her mind, and tingled to think he'd had something to do with it.

A thought occurred. "It's later."

"Later than what?"

"You said to remind you after we eat."

"Oh." She let go of his hand. "Anna says giving a man satisfaction starts in the kitchen. That sharing a light meal with your guy is a kind of foreplay, and watching one stuff himself on your food is the next best thing to sex."

"Hm. Hearing that beforehand might have had an effect on my table manners." He watched a hint of color appear just under her eyes, and decided to change the subject. "Kat, do you ever think maybe you were meant to do something with your power? Something big?"

"You mean, like, don a costume and fight crime?" She smiled and shook her head. "You're not going to see me in a Spandex outfit with a clever emblem on my chest anytime soon, Daniel. If I get my picture taken getting a cat out of a tree, I'd have to relocate."

"Too bad."

"I'm sure a comprehensive study of Genactive abilities would revolutionize modern science. Maybe after IO goes out of business. Not before."

"I was talking about the Spandex."

After an hour, the path led them back to the picnic area. They stepped out of the trees, and Dan glanced at their table. What he saw made him freeze, tugging on Kat's hand to halt her.

Six men in their late teens or early twenties were seated at the table, feasting on the contents of their picnic cooler. One of them spotted the couple staring from the edge of the trees and raised a drumstick, grinning. The others turned and exchanged words. One of them started to rise.

Kat tugged at his hand, pulling him back into the woods. "Come on, let's go."

He felt anger rising. "Your cooler."

"It's nothing. Let's _go_."

"You're not scared of these punks."

"I'm scared of mixing it up with them. I might hurt somebody."

"I wouldn't worry about it." Compared to the people who'd been trying to kill him for the past four years, they looked fat and slow and sloppy. Dan was reasonably sure he could take them all if none of them was armed.

"And if one of them ends up in the emergency room with a story to tell? How long until it finds its way to the wrong ears? Let's just circle around to the lot and pick up the car."

He relented, and they trekked through the woods towards the parking lot. "You have trouble in this park before?"

"Never. These guys must be staking it out."

They reached the edge of the woods, and the blacktop of the lot was visible through the trees. But when they emerged, it was Caitlin's turn to stop short.

The Charger was surrounded. The young toughs from the picnic table were all over it: a couple parked on the fenders, another leaning on the driver's door, one standing at the back bumper, another at the right rear quarter. The last peered in the passenger window, tugging experimentally on the door handle. It was only then Dan realized theirs was the only car still in the lot. Two of the boys were white, the others Hispanic, and they spoke back and forth in Spanish. They were quite obviously waiting for the car's owner to return. One of them cupped his hands in front of his chest and wiggled them up and down as if he was juggling, and the others laughed.

He turned to her. "Well? Leave it?"

She shook her head. "It'll be gone when we come back."

"It's insured, right?" If he'd been alone, he'd already be walking up on them, but Kat's fear of exposure had made him cautious and protective.

"I can't let it be stolen. The custom job doesn't stop at the paint. There are items that would cause talk."

He started forward and ran into a hand as immovable as a steel pylon. "No. They might be armed. Stay here."

"What? I-"

"_Dan._" She looked at him, pleading. "It doesn't _matter_ if they're armed, unless you're with me."

He remembered the mall parking lot video, the storm of bullets bouncing harmlessly off her. But one gun aimed at him would make her helpless. "Go on, then," he said, seething.

One of them noticed her marching towards them from the treeline and alerted another. A moment later, all but the loafer at the driver's door were standing between her and the car, predatory smiles on their faces. She stopped a couple of steps from them and said something he couldn't hear. Then she pushed past them quickly, ignoring the hands that briefly stroked her hips and flanks and breasts as she slipped through. The last troublemaker was still leaning against the door; he had the manner of a leader, if this pack of jackals had such a thing. When she unlocked the doors with her fob, he put one hand over the handle and cupped her chin in the other. He leaned close and spoke, smiling without showing teeth. The others crowded close behind her, and Dan could see one of them cup her buttock in one hand, just as the leader dropped his hand from Kat's chin to squeeze her breast. She slapped his hand off the handle and opened the door hard enough to force him back. She inserted herself clumsily into the vehicle, slammed the door, and engaged the locks. The boys slapped the car's hood and top and windows, grinning and taunting, as she backed it out of its slot and headed towards the gate. They laughed and hooted after her until she was down the driveway and out of sight, then galloped off in the other direction, barking at each other in obvious high spirits.

Dan trudged down the path towards the entrance, his vision darkened by rage. Her car was waiting in the drive, just around the bend. He got in. "What did you say to them?"

"I said you'd already called the police, and you were on your way to meet them at the gate." She put the car in gear and rolled forward. "I presume they took off like rabbits as soon as they didn't have someone to show off for."

"Yeah." He unclenched his teeth and slowed his breathing.

A soft hand came to rest over his. "Sorry. Lousy date, huh?"

"Just a lousy ending."

She brought the car to a stop at the entrance and turned to him. "This doesn't have to be the end."

-0-

"Okay, my eyes are closed." Kat smiled from under her hands. "What's the surprise?"

"Shouldn't be a surprise, really." Daniel's voice was flat and strange. "I really hoped things could work out. But there's too much to overcome. We're different people, and we're getting further apart all the time. There's really only one way this can end. I'm sorry, Kat."

She dropped her hands to see a Lethe dispenser pointed at her face.

She sat bolt upright, wrapped in blind dark. She felt a mattress under her, but no sheets fell away as she sat up. A metallic weight settled at the back of her neck and on her collarbones. She gasped, a long drawn-out intake of breath that was almost a scream in reverse.

Then she felt the touch of thin fabric on her shoulder and breasts and hips: her nightshirt and panties. A turn of her head showed the faint glow from her bedside clock. Her hammering heart slowed. _The sheets are on the floor at the foot of the bed, like they are any time I wake up after a restless night._

She grasped the collar. It was the device Dixie had given her that stymied IO's method of remotely disconnecting a Gen from her power. _Not all it does, apparently. What possessed me to wear it to bed? I haven't had it on since Chula Vista, five months ago._ She found the catch and dropped it to the floor.

She looked at the clock again: ten PM. She'd been home by seven. Her date with Daniel had turned awkward after that business at the park, and they'd ended it shortly after. Kat had endured bullies for half her life; it was something she'd learned to shrug off, although being groped was a new and unpleasant experience. But Daniel had seemed far more upset than she, and she could tell he was having trouble letting it go. She'd felt an urge to throw her arms around him, to reassure him everything was all right. But the brooding look in his eyes had put her off, and she'd quietly agreed to part company and had left him at his father's door with a little-girl kiss goodnight. At home, the hottest shower she could stand helped strip the feel of the hoodlums' hands from her skin, and she'd gone to bed early, thinking about Daniel's unsettling mood and the look in his eye as they'd parted. Some unfathomable impulse had made her take the cancellation collar from her nightstand drawer and fasten it around her neck before she'd settled in.

She reached down for the sheets and pulled them up, intending to go back to sleep. She found her teddy bear among the wadded bedclothes and brought it up with them. She curled up on her side with the plush toy in its usual place under her chin, and felt herself drifting off right away. Caitlin was no stranger to bad dreams, but seldom remembered them a few minutes after waking. This one had been more vivid than most, and she was a naturally introspective person, but she wasn't about to look for hidden messages in a dream, especially one induced by some mind-bending contraption she didn't understand. She fell asleep, and soon was immersed in a more pleasant subconscious journey.

-0-

Dan was certain the thugs who'd molested Kat would return to the park, and he was right. The place was fenced and its gates were locked at sundown, but that didn't deter the characters who'd decided to make it their personal pissing ground, or Dan either. He watched them horsing around in the deep shadow of the picnic area, smoking pot and scattering the cooler's plastic containers over the ground. One of them was carving something into one of the tabletops with a big combat knife. Dan stepped out of the trees and waited to be noticed.

It took a while. The moon had set just two hours after sundown, and the only light came from distant buildings and streetlights, most of which didn't reach under the trees. And the glowing tips of the joints and cigarettes they were smoking were degrading their night vision. He'd almost decided to cough or make a sudden movement when one of them thrust his head in Dan's direction.

"Hey. Look who's here." It was the leader, the one who'd stopped Kat at her car door and offered her a filthy proposition. "You come back for your cooler, man? You didn't wait long enough, we're still here. Or maybe you grew a pair?" The others turned Dan's way, intent as a pack of wolves on a deer. "You shoulda waited till morning." He grinned at the delinquents flanking him. "Bet that big puta with the melons is feelin lonely right now."

Dan took a step back into the trees, and the gang – or whatever it was – stirred into action. The one with the knife brandished his weapon as they all sprinted into the woods after him.

Twenty steps into the darkness under the trees, he passed the trunk where his father stood. His dad tossed him a trenching tool, a short wood-handled camp shovel with a folding head, presently extended and locked. Footsteps pounded right behind him. Dan turned and swung with a one-handed grip, and the back of the tool's head connected with the punk's face with a _punng_. He went over backwards, his feet sliding out in front of him.

The next one was the joker with the knife. He held it out in front of him, ready to thrust, but Dan was sure he had no idea how outmatched he was against a man carrying an edged weapon with a two-foot reach. A hard jab at the jerk's eyes schooled him too late. As his hands flew up to his face, Dan drew back quickly and brought the edge of the tool down on his knife wrist. It had about the same effect as a hatchet. The assailant screamed and dropped the knife, clutching his spurting arm.

Two more rushed him, butterfly blades in their hands, and his father said, "Now." Dan froze and squinted, and Andy Grissom turned a million-candlepower spotlight on the attackers' faces, dazzling their night-adjusted eyes, and turned it off again, blinding them in a second. Dan moved the instant the light shut off. An enthusiastic application of the flat of the shovel to the sides of their necks put them out of the game. _Two left._

The stand of trees was far from silent. The moaning and sobbing of his victims formed a background to Dan's voice as he called out, "Hey, _jefe_, what about _your_ balls? Did I leave them all on the ground? That where your courage comes from, eh? Wait till it gets around how you all got skragged by an old man and a guy with a little garden shovel."

A grunt behind him, and the sound of a body hitting the ground. He didn't turn. "Must've thought he was being sneaky," his father said. "One left."

"She begged me not to come back here," Dan called into the darkness, lying through his teeth. Kat had had no idea, of course. "She said, 'don't hurt them. They're just boys, stupid boys who think they're men. Let it go.' But she forgets that nits grow into lice." He moved cautiously, listening. "But I'll let you live, if you ask real nice. Or maybe you can just run away with your tail between your legs. Go on, little perro. Run away, and maybe I won't come looking for you."

Ahead and to the left, he heard the sound of a gun's slide being run back. "Showtime," he breathed.

His father must have heard it too; he moved off, putting some separation between them. "If you've got bullets in that thing, and you can find the safety, you should fire a few shots in the air. Maybe the cops will hear it and come in time to save you."

Crackle and swish of shoes on fallen leaves. Their quarry was moving, but with no practice at being quiet. He probably had no practice with the gun either, Dan thought, aside from plinking a few beer cans at five or ten yards. Dan imagined the little cockroach posing with it in front of a mirror, holding it sideways at shoulder height in a grip that wouldn't let him hit anything beyond spitting distance. He heard a soft thump, probably a shoulder against a trunk. Stepping carefully and moving dead slow, he closed on the sound.

Almost on the other side of their target, his father continued to taunt, splitting the punk's attention and covering whatever small sounds Dan was making. "Finding out there's more to being tough than shaking down schoolkids for their lunch money, eh, Chico? This must be the first time anybody ever stood up to you, or you wouldn't have lived so long. Bet you're ready to cry, huh, you little pussy."

"Shut up," the punk said, almost too low to be heard, and somewhat closer than Dan had expected.

"What's that? Speak up, chiquita, I'm an old man, I don't hear the high-pitched sounds so good anymore."

"Where's your bitch, old man?" It was a lame comeback, Dan thought. From the sound of his voice, Dan could tell the punk was very close now, and facing mostly away from him towards his dad.

"Dragging your buddies to the holes we dug for them. Yours is waiting."

Dan slipped around a tree and spotted him. He was facing away, with his left shoulder pressed against the tree, turned sideways in an attempt to use it for cover. His hands were out of sight in front of him, but Dan remembered that he'd reached for Kat's chin and breast with his right hand. _If he turns, he'll turn away from the trunk, clockwise, leading with the gun hand._ Dan changed his grip on the shovel and moved closer, waiting for his dad to pick up the patter again before he closed in.

"What's the matter, Chico? Not having fun anymore? Maybe scaring little girls isn't so clever after all. For sure, scaring this one wasn't. It was about as smart as sticking a firecracker up your ass. Speaking of which. I brought a couple."

The target started cussing in Spanish; Dan thought it possible those were the only words of it the schmuck knew. The sound allowed him to step right up on him. He could have clubbed him, but he had other plans. "Psst."

His quarry spun, right hand extending a gun, but Dan was already in motion. His left-handed swing didn't connect with as much force as he would have liked, but it was enough. The punk gave a cry of pain as the shovel head broke his knuckles and the gun flew off into the trees without going off.

Instantly, Dan had the point of the shovel against the man's throat, pushing him up against the tree. His victim's eyes were the size of golf balls as he stared down the handle at Dan. He started to reach weakly for the handle, and Dan jabbed it harder into his throat, making him choke. "Don't."

His father came up behind. "The one who likes to play with knives is bleeding out. I give him maybe twenty minutes if he doesn't get taken care of. So far, you're better off than half your crew. Is it enough, or do we have to make an example out of you?"

"What do you want, man?" The young coyote's voice was hoarse with pain and fear. Dan could feel his Adam's apple bob through the shovel handle. He was sure that at least a couple of this character's buddies were conscious and listening to every word.

"What do _you_ want? You want to live? You want to walk and talk and eat with the teeth God gave you? Answer."

"Yes."

"Then you need to come to Jesus, boy." His father pressed close. "What mistake brought you to this?"

The kid stared at Dan. "Messed with you. Sorry, okay? I'm sorry."

"You're sorry you didn't get away with it and your luck ran out." Dan leaned on the handle, cutting off the punk's air; he started to squirm. "You don't want to lay hands on what doesn't belong to you, pal. I'm not talking about the goddamned cooler, either. Don't come back here, ever. And if you ever see the redhead again, you go the other way as fast as your bandy legs can take you." He jerked the shovel back, and his victim slid down the trunk till his knees hit the dirt and he pitched forward. He landed on both hands, and the broken one went out from under him as he gasped in pain and rolled onto his back.

"One more thing." Dan pried the injured limb off the man's chest with his foot and pinned the wrist to the dirt. He watched the troublemaker's eyes widen in horror as he raised the shovel high in a two-handed grip, point down. "This is the hand you touched her with."

"No, wait, _noooooo!_"

He plunged it into the dirt next to the man's wrist. The edge nicked the skin, drawing a trickle of blood. He pulled it out again. "All of you, be gone before the park patrol swings by. I hope one of you knows a doctor who won't ask questions. The emergency room would be a _very_ bad idea."

Dan and his father headed for the park's perimeter and the street where their car waited. On the way, he took off his bloody jacket, turned it inside out, and balled it up under his arm. "Think it's enough?"

"It's all we could do, regardless. Unless you really wanted to kill them."

"So bad I could taste it. But no."


	6. Some Guys Never Learn

Sunday September 24 2006  
Escondido

"Mom!" Drew jerked his hand out of Dan's grip and ran on four-year-old legs down the path to Adrienne. She scooped him up with a squeal that drew smiles from passersby. She kissed his cheeks and held him tight while Dan watched with an ache in his chest. Mother and child talked with noses touching, smiling into each other's eyes as if they were alone in the park. _The way she did with Kat at the restaurant. It's part of her talent, I suppose._

_I wonder if she has a special smile for Alan._

He gave himself a mental shake. _Get a grip. You're only allowed to be jealous over one woman at a time, Grissom._

_No._ _Last night wasn't an act of jealousy._

_Then, what was it?_

He'd picked Beliz Park for the visit. It was the only park that he knew had a playground, having seen it the day before, but he thought it would be safe. It seemed unlikely the clowns he and Dad had stomped last night would return so soon; Dan imagined most of them were still horizontal. Drew and Adrienne headed for the playground with Dan trailing behind.

-0-

From the passenger seat of the parked Charger, Sarah stared out the windshield at the park across the street. "Caitlin, this is _so_ not a good idea."

"I'm not jealous." Kat lowered the binoculars she'd been using, scanned the area with bare eyes, and brought the glasses back up, watching the child and two adults at the play area. "Seriously. I'm just concerned. He told me he was bringing Drew here to visit with his mom, but that was before. After what happened yesterday, I couldn't believe he'd risk running into those jerks again with Drew and Adrienne. He just wouldn't. Something's changed."

"You seem awfully sure about him, considering you've only seen him – what, four times? He's good-looking, in a rugged sort of way, but that only takes you so far. He comes with a lot of baggage."

"So do I." She watched the playground. Adrienne was chasing Drew around the equipment like a little kid, grinning from ear to ear as the child laughed and ducked under a platform, forcing her almost to hands and knees behind him. She beckoned, and Daniel joined the chase, hesitantly at first, then with growing enjoyment. "He risks jail or worse if he's seen with me, just for starts. And I can tell he's disturbed by what they're telling him about me."

"If he believes a word of it, he doesn't deserve you."

She smiled without humor. "Even if it's true?"

-0-

Drew scampered up the ladder to the top of the slide, giggling, as Adrienne made as if to grab him. She rushed to the end of the slide as he started his descent, and he slid into her arms, shrieking with glee. Dan felt a grin stretching his cheeks as he watched.

She set the boy down. "Whew. Let me catch my breath, Buddy, and I'll push you on the swing."

"Kay." Drew sprinted to a geodesic dome made of pipe and started climbing.

Adrienne drew close. "So. How was the date?"

The picnic area was just out of sight beyond a small stand of trees. Dan thought the cooler might still be there. "Could've gone better."

"All right, what did you do?"

He shook his head. "Things just didn't go the way I wanted, is all."

"No kiss?"

"Peck on the lips. Cousin-kiss, I guess. We broke it up early. It just wasn't right."

She studied him. "You sound like you're losing hope. It was only the second date, Danny. I know you're used to sweeping girls off their feet and all, but our redhead isn't like other girls, I think."

_If only you knew._ "I'm not giving up. I'm just getting a better idea what I've gotten into, is all."

-0-

"So _Anna's_ pushing you two together?"

"It's not like that. But she likes him, and she thinks… Oh, hell. She thinks he'd be useful."

"I suppose he might, if you can be sure of him. Otherwise…" Sarah shrugged. "But if you're _sure_ of him…"

"Why am I here?" She raised the binoculars again, more to avoid Sarah's eyes than to bring the three subjects closer. "Not sure. I've just got a feeling trouble's near, the way I did when Roxy was up on stage last Sunday. I was right that time. I'm afraid to ignore it."

-0-

"Looks like I'll be quitting Arena's soon."

He watched Drew climb up the underside of the dome, hanging by hands and heels. "Oh? Thought you loved that place." _You sure wouldn't have given it up for me._ "Where are you going?"

"I'm opening a club in Temecula."

"'Opening.' For who?"

"For me. It's my club."

"Oh." He searched for something to say. "Alan put up the money?"

"I'd never ask. No, some cash angel who thinks I've got what it takes."

He kept his voice casual. "Going to dance there?"

"At my own club? No way. Not anywhere else, either. This place has to ooze success from opening day. I can't let people think I need to subsidize my income. I might even discontinue the website."

"Heh." He kept his eyes on his son. Drew reached the top and hung by his knees four feet off the ground, gently swinging. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Well, I'm not doing it for someone else's pride. And I haven't changed my attitude about the work. I'm just moving on."

Dan swallowed. "I'm glad for you. I'm sure you'll do great." A pause. "You should have done it years ago."

-0-

As she watched Daniel and Adrienne in a conversation that brought smiles to both their faces, Caitlin felt Sarah's hand drop on her thigh. Six months earlier, she would have jumped at the girl's touch; but they were friends again, and she understood the Princess better than ever. So she knew Sarah just wanted her attention, and had touched her leg because it was handy. "What?"

"Look down the street. The guy inside the fence."

She lowered the glasses and looked along the chain-link fronting the park. A hundred yards down, a young man in baggy pants and a sleeveless shirt had just grabbed the top rail and was swinging his legs over. She noticed a huge bruise on the right side of his neck. He jogged across the road to disappear among the buildings on the other side, moving a bit stiffly. Suspicion bloomed. "One of them, I think." _So that's what's changed._

"He moves like he fell off a horse."

"Uh huh. I just hope he doesn't feel ready to climb back on."

-0-

Drew squealed as he rocketed upward in the swing. "Higher!"

Adrienne grinned as he swung back to her, shoulder-high, and she gave him another push. "You're almost even with the bar now. What are you trying to do, loop-de-loop?"

"_Yes!_"

"Not on my watch." She shook her head and looked at Daniel. "Yours, no denying it."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Good. Sometimes I wondered about that." She focused on the four-year-old in his swing. "I never did that. Not once. Never even thought about it. Alan was my accountant for years, but I didn't ask him out until I told you the marriage was done. I don't care what your father said."

"Adrienne, you know he wasn't spying on you."

"I know he was. And tailoring his observations to fit his prejudices. There's no other explanation for the way you treated me sometimes when you got back. Not the _first_ day," she added with a brief smile, "But after you left the house and started making the rounds. Starting with a visit to your dad."

"Our marriage didn't crash and burn because of what Dad said about you."

"I suppose not. But I hated the way you came home from there all primed for a fight."

"Funny, I always thought you were waiting to start one with me."

She sighed softly. "Was it all about stripping, Danny? Really?"

"Don't know. If we had other problems, we never saw them past that one, I think."

Drew yelled, "Hey! _Push!_"

"Enough, already." To confirm that she was done, Adrienne walked around to the front of the swing. Dan followed. Drew grunted with the effort of maintaining the length of his arc.

His soon-to-be-ex turned to him. "You know, this may be the longest conversation we've had in years without shouting."

"Well, we're off our usual topics."

"No, just approaching them from a different angle." She smiled at him. "Strange to think there's a chance we could become friends."

-0-

"Listen," Sarah said urgently, "Just because Anna feels like playing matchmaker, or dealmaker, is no reason for you to attach yourself to this guy."

Caitlin took her eyes from her glasses. "You two still getting along?"

"Better than ever. But I know she has a problem letting us make our own mistakes." Sarah leaned towards her. "Before he left so suddenly, I thought she was pushing you towards Luis. Not that you needed any pushing."

"He's out of the picture. It's nice he's writing, I suppose, but I doubt I'll ever see him again. There's nothing going on between us."

"Come on. Everybody can see you're shunning him. He asks about you in every letter, and he's plainly upset you're not reading his letters or writing back. So, _was_ there something?"

She sighed heavily. "Oh, not you, too. No. I'm still a hopeless virgin, okay?" _But if things had gone just a little differently that day we were alone at the pool…_

Sarah's voice dropped. "So's Bobby."

She set the glasses on the dash and rested her forearms on the wheel, surveillance forgotten. "I wondered, but I wasn't sure. Five months together, and you're still… not?"

"Not. My problem, not his. The boy has the patience of a saint."

"Well, he always did have a monkish air about him." She lowered her voice. "Is it really so hard?"

"Yes, but not the way you mean it. I don't have trouble working up an interest. I have to break the clinch and leave the room to throw up and open my breathing passages. It's an allergic reaction."

Caitlin blinked. "To _him_?"

Sarah nodded. "He doesn't know. He just thinks…"

"That you're having trouble switching teams for him." _And that's why the Benadryl and asthma inhalers appeared in the medicine cabinet. _"Sarah, you should _tell_ him."

"I'm afraid he might go all noble on me, try to keep his distance to save me from myself."

"Sarah, _I_ know him better than that. He'll never let you go as long as you're willing. You should tell him."

"This from a girl with a shoebox full of unopened love letters in her closet."

_Under my bed, actually, but…_ Instead of replying, she picked up the binoculars and trained them on the playground.

Adrienne was rushing towards two figures lying together in the sand: Daniel and Drew.

-0-

"Dad!"

Dan turned to see Drew hurtling through the air towards him, and threw his arms up just in time to catch the boy. Drew's weight was a fraction of his father's but he had a lot of velocity behind it; they collided and went down. Dan twisted to absorb the brunt of the impact, and grunted in pain from the shock that traveled from elbow to shoulder. But Drew stared back into his eyes, surprised but unhurt.

Adrienne knelt beside them, and tugged drew out of his arms. "Are you okay?" A moment later, she looked at him, and he felt included in the question.

He tested his limbs. Nothing seemed broken, but his shoulder was aflame, and he supposed he'd torn something. His hip and lower back felt tender too, probably from his twisted posture when he'd hit dirt. _I've come through firefights in better shape than this._ "I'm okay."

With that assurance, her face and manner changed. She turned the boy to face her. "What the _hell_ was that about? What were you _doing_?"

"He was playing," Dan said as he rose carefully. "Something he does with Annie."

"She never falls down," the boy said reproachfully.

"Annie? You mean that… little blonde commando who runs with your father now? She's been playing 'parachute' with my kid?"

"She's a supervisor at his daycare." He dusted himself off. "What do you know about her?"

She picked Drew up and set him on her hip, holding him in place with one hand and his arms around her neck. With the other, she helped Dan brush the sand off his back. "I know she and your dad have a history, and she has a hard time remembering she's a married woman when he's around. If he saw her behaving that way towards anyone but him, he'd be scandalized."

"No arguing with that."_ I wonder if the attraction is some effect of the brainwashing._ "But they don't run together, she just brings him a meal now and then. She always brings a chaperone."

Adriana's hand paused at the small of his back. "Danny, Danny. Naiveté _so_ doesn't become you. Chaperones have more than one purpose, you know."

-0-

Caitlin's hands tightened on the binoculars as she watched Adrienne smiling up at Dan with one arm circling him and her hand just above his butt. The woman's easy familiarity raised a jumble of emotions in her.

"Look like quite the happy little family, don't they?" Sarah flicked a quick glance her way, and looked about to say more, but then something pulled her attention out the right window. "Uh oh."

The punk was back, with half a dozen friends. They crossed the street and swarmed over the fence, paused to regroup, and headed for the playground.

Sarah turned to her. "Break cover?"

Caitlin started the car. "If I have to. In or out?"

"You have to ask?"

-0-

The smile on Adrienne's face froze as she glanced past him. "Danny," she said quietly.

He turned. The hundred-space parking lot was a short distance away, and held just three or four vehicles besides Adrienne's DB9 and his dad's Jeep. One side was bordered by the little wood that separated it from the picnic area; the side opposite was open, and the park's main drive ran along it, separated by twenty feet of struggling grass. The far end was also bordered in grass, and beyond it lay the park's perimeter fence where it paralleled the street. A bunch of young toughs was assembled on this side of the fence, apparently having just climbed over. A couple of them glanced their way and started towards them.

The one in the lead had a huge bruise on the side of his neck. _Dammit. Who'd have guessed those hyenas had any other friends?_ "Hey," the boy called. "You wanna show me how tough you are, now you're not jumpin me in the dark when I'm stoned?"

Running wasn't an option, not with Drew in tow. The thugs were already closer to the cars than they were. He thought briefly about his chances of holding them off until his wife and child could get away, and decided they were too slim. And he was afraid to give them an opportunity to run after her; he'd seen how the excitement of chasing down fleeing prey removed the last of a human predator's inhibitions.

"Get behind me," Dan said. He didn't know what good it would do to put himself between her and the approaching dogpack, but he was short on options.

The hoodlums murmured and smiled at each other as they continued to close the distance at a saunter. "Hey, pretty lady," the banged-up spokesman said, "don't be shy. You don't look like the shy type." He smiled at Adrienne as he slid a hand along the back fender of her car, a silver Aston Martin convertible with the top down. "Sweet," he said, looking meaningfully into the tiny back seat. "But I bet you earned it. The redhead only got a Charger. Maybe he's just breakin her in? Sides, that big puta wouldn't fit back there, less you fold her up real good." He glanced at Dan and fingered his belt buckle. "You show us what you do for the old man, maybe we let you all walk away. How bout it?"

_Maybe if I take down the little loudmouth_, Dan thought desperately, _threaten to break his neck or something, I can hold them off long enough for her and Drew to get away._ He'd almost prepared to move on the idea when a throaty rumble intruded into his awareness, the throat-clearing noise of a powerful engine revving once. Dan glanced toward the park entrance and saw a familiar coal-black vehicle rolling at a walking pace out of the shade of the trees near the gate. The cellphone in his shirt pocket rang.

"Don't even think about it," the nearest tough said.

The phone stopped after a single ring. "I don't need to. It's just a ready signal."

The spokesman frowned. "Eh?"

Dan glanced behind him at his frightened wife clutching their child. He smiled. "Incoming."

With a roar and a squeal of tires, the Charger sprinted down the drive for a short distance before hopping over the curb into the grassy divider, throwing up clods and soil as it accelerated. It reached the asphalt and headed their way without slowing.

The gang, or whatever it was, turned and stiffened at the sight of the big cruiser bearing down on them like a bowling ball towards a set of pins. Dan remembered Chula Vista, and felt a dark anticipation. "She means it, fellas."

They scattered as the car left the blacktop and hurtled towards them. The loudmouth was a little slow, and the driver's door sprang open to swat him out of the way with a _whump_. The vehicle broadslid to an abrupt stop in front of them. The locks popped.

"Kat!" Drew yelled.

"In, quick." Kat slammed her door.

He pulled the rear door open, then circled around front, intending to get in the shotgun seat before he saw through the windshield that it was occupied. _Queen of Spades._ Then, guiltily, _Sarah Rainmaker_. He opened the door behind her. _My God. The picture doesn't do her justice. No picture would. Or is it…_

"Gun," the dark-haired beauty said, and a flash and a crack behind him like a transformer blowing sent him into the seat beside Drew without looking. "Sorry. Got carried away. I hate guns. Two standing, Caitlin."

"I see them." The two in question were sprinting for the fence. Kat spun the car back to the blacktop and gave chase, not taking her foot off the accelerator until the vehicle was two lengths from the fence and her quarry had spilled over it into the street, still running. She hit the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a stop with its nose stretching the chain link, reversed, and did an expert one-eighty back to the pavement. "Kay, let's get your cars. The Aston is yours, Adrienne?"

Adrienne glanced his way with round eyes. "Um, yes."

"Nice. Daniel, why are you driving your dad's Jeep?"

"My muffler fell to the pavement this morning. Kat, what are you doing here?"

"I might ask the same. Except I know. Your crusader itch got the better of you last night." She stopped the car beside the Aston. "Oh. Daniel, Drew, this is Sarah."

"You're pretty," Drew said.

Sarah turned in the seat to smile at him. "I get that a lot." She flicked a glance at Dan. "Your father teach you to say that?"

The boy answered carefully, "No, he says I should tell girls they're smart."

"He's cute, Daniel. If he's yours, I guess there's hope for you."

Adrienne looked from one of them to another. "Am I going to get an explanation or not?"

"Not, I think." Sarah turned back in the seat. "Better go."

"Christ. It's like being dropped into a movie you haven't seen."

Dan got out with Adrienne and Drew, since his ride was three slots away. He paused with the door half open. "You didn't answer my question, Kat."

"No. I'll call later. And, Daniel… I'm never coming back here. Just let them have the park, okay?"

"I suppose." He shut the door, and the car accelerated away.

Drew looked up at his mother with solemn eyes. "You going now?"

She knelt and hugged him tight. "I'll see you soon, promise." She let him go, stood, and turned to Dan. "We need to talk."

He shook his head. "I can't tell you everything. It's job-related."

"Fine. I'll do all the talking then. Kat's my friend, but it's clear I don't know her very well, or the crowd she runs with, or what they do. But I do know that Drew doesn't need exposure to people with such a casual attitude about physical danger." She sagged against her car. "God, what almost happened… and I don't even know _why._" She looked up towards the playground and four figures sprawled in the dirt. Three of them, the ones with wisps of smoke clinging to their clothing, were rolling around like restless sleepers. But the fourth, rising to his knees and one hand and shaking his head, was the coyote with the bruises. "We'd better go."

He buckled Drew into the Jeep's rear passenger seat. Then he walked back to the playground.

The coyote was swaying on his feet, head down, holding his arm against his side - broken by Kat's door, probably. He looked up at the sound of Dan's step, and his pain-dulled eyes widened. He threw his good hand up. "Hey-"

Dan kicked him in the crotch, and he folded so hard his knees and forehead hit the dirt. Dan considered breaking his neck, but decided against, more for the trouble the incident might cause Kat than any other reason. He returned to the jeep and fired it up, leading Adrienne out of the park, and they both turned north, headed uptown.

His cellphone rang. He picked it out of his pocket, expecting the caller ID to show a blank display, but it wasn't Kat calling; it was Adrienne. "_That was risky, sickening, and totally unnecessary. But thank you._"

He smiled into the phone. "You want to grab lunch somewhere?"


	7. Keeping the Balance

Sunday September 24 2006

Escondido

Anna moved through her kitchen, putting away the dinner dishes and preparing to do some baking. She didn't perform those chores at her usual speed, however, because bouncing through the kitchen like a racquetball in play might unsettle the guest sitting at the little table behind her. Instead, she went about her work with all the unhurried, sultry grace Sarah had taught her, very conscious of the man watching, imagining she could feel his gaze on her. She bent her enhanced senses toward him, trying to gauge his mood.

Her husband had been away for much of the last ten days, working on one of his covert projects, and she hadn't burdened him overmuch with details of her and Caitlin's dealings with the Grissoms. Not that she'd hidden anything from him, of course. He knew she was spending time with a man she thought would be useful to their cause and that a full accounting lay in their future, once Jack was home for a while with nothing pressing.

Jack had left the house Tuesday morning and arrived home just in time for Sunday dinner. Ordinarily, his behavior towards her on his return from such an absence would be perfectly predictable, but not this time; his mood and pheromone production had been subdued, and his thoughts unreadable. She bent over to retrieve the mixing bowl from the cabinet, and flicked a glance behind her to see Jack watching her. She smiled. "Penny for your thoughts."

Jack set his coffee mug on the table. "Just reflecting how much I enjoy watching you, even doing the most mundane things. Especially now that I can look all I want without feeling like a pervert."

She smiled as she moved flour, cocoa, sugar, and a few other items from the pantry to the counter and stood on tiptoe to reach into the cupboard for the muffin pans, stretching a little more than necessary. "I knew you were looking plenty of times. But I enjoyed the attention, even before I started thinking about sharing your bed."

She heard the mug scrape slightly as he lifted it off the table. She heard him swallow. "This fellow Andy. Does he like watching you in the kitchen?"

She stilled, then very deliberately turned to her man. She untied her apron and draped it across the back of the chair facing him. "You've been talking to Caitlin."

"She hasn't been running to me with stories. But she's obviously uneasy about the two of you, and her skill at deception is no match for mine as a detective."

She sat at the table and took his hand, searching his biometric tells. "I love you, Jack."

"I believe that with all my heart. But I know it doesn't guarantee… I just want to know what he is to you."

"He's a friend and a useful tool. He was my guard at the research facility."

"I know that. But knowing raises more questions than it answers. Did you track him down?"

"No. We met again by happenstance at daycare. His grandson's adorable, by the way. He got to know me as a person, and now he's guilting over treating me like a machine and wants to make amends." She dimpled. "And, now that he's thinking of me as a girl, he thinks I'm cute. I'm sure he'd have made a serious pass at me by now if I wasn't married."

"So," Jack said slowly, "he's made _un_-serious passes at you? Testing the water?"

She offered him her gravest expression. "Yes. And he sometimes puts his arms around me. We've kissed, more than once. I don't think we'll ever share a bed, but I won't preclude that possibility from my playbook… unless you tell me to."

He gave a tiny shrug. "It doesn't sit well. I'm sure you know it. But… if it's business, I have to respect your judgment. If it's something else… I have to respect your decision. But I need to at least know which it is."

She smiled and leaned forward to place a hand on his cheek, the left, and stroked the scars with her thumb. "I thought you were from the Woodstock generation. Free love, all that."

"When Jimi was up on stage playing 'The Star-spangled Banner', I was on the other side of the world gathering intel for Project GAMMA, ferreting out double agents. The only women I dared share sheets with, I paid for on leave in the Philippines." He raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

She nodded. "It may be necessary, to keep him in hand. I don't know. If so, I'd do my best to please him, and try to enjoy it as well – I think he'd know if I was just going through the motions. But it would never, _ever_ be like it is with us." She placed both hands on his face. "_This_ is my man. Always and forever, unless he says different."

His mouth quirked. "I don't know how you manage, sharing a roof with a caveman like me."

"Mmm. When you say 'caveman,' I get the strangest fantasies of being carried off to bed, feebly struggling – at least until you start tearing off my clothes."

Two minutes later, she pulled her face back from his and wriggled to signal that she wanted out of his lap. His hands came off her thigh and hip, and she stood. "He knows I'm married to you, by the way. I really don't think he's inclined to take things past flirting unless I push him hard. Leading me into infidelity would leave a bad taste in his mouth, and besides, I don't think he'd want to risk your ire. When I told him, he said, "I've been coming on to Jack Lynch's wife, now I'm holding a gun on her? My life isn't worth a plugged nickel." She set the oven, then removed eggs, butter, and milk from the refrigerator and began mixing dry ingredients in a large bowl.

His face smoothed. "Held a gun on you? What was that about?"

"Oh. Not a gun, actually. A scrambler."

"_What?_"

"Relax, love. It was discharged, inert. I saw right away that the indicator was dark when he pulled it out of his pocket. He knew it was dead, too, but it was the only one he'd ever seen, so he didn't know about the indicator. He pretended to threaten me with it to get information. I pretended I thought my life was in danger, and I gave it to him." She added wet ingredients and applied a whisk to the mixture with blurry speed.

"Where did he get it?"

She shrugged. "A friend in IO, he said. I suppose his friend reported it lost in the field." She inserted cupcake papers into the cavities in the muffin pan.

"Anna. Scramblers are proscribed tech. Out in the field, they're accounted for a _lot_ more carefully than a bank keeps track of its money. Nobody took one out on an op and just _lost_ it. IO would leave no stone unturned until it was recovered, or they were absolutely sure it was destroyed."

"Then… someone smuggled it out?"

"Difficult and life-threateningly dangerous, but at least it's possible. Andy's friend must owe him his life. How long did he have to plan it?"

"Well, Andy went to see him Thursday night, and had the scrambler in his hands Friday morning."

"Andy's friend has a high clearance and access to the armory, then, and a way to take it out past Security." Jack stroked his chin with a forefinger. "Interesting. I wonder if his route and methods might allow him to bring something _in_."

Anna nodded. "A hint of his potential value to us, even apart from Dan."

"Dan?"

"His son. Twenty-seven, and dreamy. Also a Keeper-in-training on our pickup team. Caitlin's dating him."

His adrenalin spiked briefly. "That's… not a joke, is it?"

"No."

"Anna. You should have talked this over with me before you set it in motion."

"I didn't, exactly. They met by chance, and nature took its course. _Before _I found out about Dan's new job."

"This is playing with nukes, doll. Have her-" He stopped. "No, that might be even more dangerous. Damn it. This can't end well."

"I'm not so sure. And I'm keeping a close eye. So's Andy. Dan has the utmost esteem for his father's opinion, and he's been treating Caitlin with respect, even after a week at IO headquarters getting his head filled with propaganda. We just have to make sure he maintains his skepticism."

"And doesn't get caught with her, which will get progressively harder the closer they become."

She filled the cupcake tins and put the empty bowl in the sink. "That is, I'll admit, the weak point in the operation. But they're aware of the risks, and they've been cautious so far. I'm not entirely sure of Dan's intentions towards our redhead, but I don't think he'll take foolish chances with her freedom."

Jack stared down into his cup. "I hope you're not misreading the boy as badly as you're misreading the father."

She'd been about to open the oven door. Instead, she turned to her man, eyes wide. "What?"

"Anna, scramblers take sixteen hours to bring to full charge. It's done prior to racking them, so they're ready when they're requisitioned."

Her brows gathered. "Meaning?"

"Meaning he lied when he said he couldn't get hands on a charged one, unless his friend discharged it before giving it to him."

"Why would he-" She stopped. "His friend wouldn't risk his life or his career to loan Andy a scrambler unless he thought he needed it. He wouldn't have given him a dead one. Andy emptied it before he came to see me. I knew it was all a bluff. But…"

"But if it was charged when he got it, he watched the indicator light change colors and go dead. That's something he'd want to hide from you, in case you'd ever seen a scrambler before. Instead…"

"Creator. He _showed_ it to me and asked if I recognized it. He made _sure_ I knew it was harmless from the beginning. Why would he _do_ that?"

"It's obvious, little doll. He couldn't bring himself to harm you. But he had to know the truth. So he played a double bluff, letting you think that he didn't know the scrambler was dead, and pretending he was really threatening to kill you. He put his life in your hands, and let you decide whether to kill him or talk to him, with no reason to lie."

_Rick, pressing his chest against Ilsa's pistol. Go ahead and shoot. You'd be doing me a favor. Or tell me who you really are. It's worth my life to know._ "He's a lunatic."

"He's a man in love." Jack gave her a look that would have produced goosebumps on a bio girl. "I sympathize completely."

"Well, I don't." She set her cupcake tins in the oven, set the timer, and marched down the hall to the master bathroom, thinking furiously. She showered with a lightly perfumed soap. She coiffed her short hair carefully and put on a little makeup. She applied a drop of perfume at ears, wrists, and the backs of her knees. Then she pulled out some brief and lacy underthings from her dresser and a dress with a short pleated skirt from her closet. She dressed and surveyed the results of her efforts in a full-length mirror. _Mad hot_, she said to herself. _Possible jailbait, but worth the risk._ She picked up her purse and left the room.

Jack was still in the kitchen, but standing. "Going out?"

"Yes." She pulled the pans from the oven just as the timer went off and set them on the stovetop. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, with one hand at the back of his neck. "Don't wait up."

"Where are you going?"

She stepped into the hall, headed for the door. "To Andy's, for a little one-upmanship."

-0-

The doorbell jangled unrelentingly. Andy looked across the kitchen counter at his son. "You expecting someone?"

Dan shook his head and took his hands out of the dishwater. "I'll get it."

"No. I'll answer my own door, and see what this joker wants. Then I'll be back to put away dishes."

He crossed the living room to the foyer, his irritation growing. His caller wasn't just leaning on the button; he was stabbing it with machine-gun frequency. _This better involve chest pains or loss of blood, buddy. Or it will._

He put an eye to the peephole. Annie stood on the other side, looking urgent and agitated, her shoulders twitching as she attacked the doorbell.

He threw the door wide. "Annie-"

She launched herself at him, and he staggered back a step as they collided. Her arms wound around his neck and pulled, drawing their faces together, and she kissed him fiercely. Her tongue slipped past his closed lips and hammered at his teeth, demanding entry. His jaw dropped of its own accord, and his mouth was full of her.

His nose filled with her scent, something sweet and musky that would have made him lightheaded even if she'd been sitting across a table from him. All his senses filled with her, crowding out everything else. His hands had found the small of her back somehow; she rolled her hips, and her buttocks were cupped in his hands. As soon as he had her weight, she brought her legs up around his waist, crossing her ankles. Her shoes thudded to the floor, and he felt her heels pressing into his ass. His erection strained painfully against his pants; it felt like the biggest one of his life.

She pulled her face back an inch. "Bedroom. Now. Or swelp me, we'll do it right here on the floor. I won't even kick the door closed."

Without thinking, he turned towards the hallway to his room just as he heard Dan's voice behind him. "_Dad?_"

He saw her eyes widen. Give her credit, she didn't let go in some futile attempt at denial. "Daniel. Where's your car?"

"Muffler shop. You here to enjoy my father's company, Annie? And get to know him better?"

He relaxed his grip on her, and she dropped her toes to the floor. "This isn't over," she whispered before she released his neck. When they'd both turned to face his son, she said, "I should be blushing, though I don't suppose I am. You were right about plans." She took a small sideways step, which placed her in front of him, and he realized she was screening him, sparing his son the sight of his old man's bulging crotch. But he could still smell her and feel her body heat, and Steely Dan wasn't going anywhere yet. He resisted the impulse to put his arms around her again, and focused on Danny's stern face as he spoke.

"I suppose this is where I'm supposed to say it's none of my business."

"Of _course_ it's your business, Daniel. You don't want to give your son into the care of people with questionable morals or weak character." She reached back for Andy's hand. "I've never done anything like this before. I hope you can believe me, and that it makes a difference. Your father is very special to me."

"He was special to you yesterday, too. And last week. But somehow you've managed to avoid screwing him."

"Yes. I've had enough self-control for that." She turned her head to look up at him, and he held his breath to check the impulse to bend down and kiss her. Her serious expression helped a little. Then she wet her lips, which didn't help at all. "But I guess self-control went out the window when I found out your father had offered his life for mine. I had to show him what that was worth to me."

The grim look on his son's face gave way to puzzlement. "Dad?"

His hardon dropped like a slashed tire. "She's exaggerating."

"No, I'm not. It was an unbelievable risk, for no reason but love." She squeezed his hand. "Don't you dare deny it."

"Will someone please, please, tell me what you two are talking about?"

"Let me tell it." She turned back to Danny. "All right. You know your dad and I have some history. Professional, not romantic. We met at IO. But I wasn't an employee. I was an experiment."

She turned suddenly, and the hand he'd been holding was suddenly around his wrist like a steel clamp. He _oofed_ as she planted her other hand in his sternum, and he found himself balanced over her head. She suspended him just long enough for his son's eyes to widen, then set him down and kissed his knuckles.

Danny said, "So, the briefings told it true. I've had a week to ask myself why that Twister game didn't make my whiskers twitch. But the briefings didn't tell it all. You're like Kat, right?"

"No." She shook her head. "Hers is genetics. Mine is engineering." She extended her hands, palms up. "I've got wires running all through me, and microprocessors in my skull. I don't have Kat's ability, but I'm stronger and faster than any unaugmented human. I was supposed to be one of their pet killers. But I… wasn't cooperative. They were working on that when your dad came on the scene, as my guard. They filled his head with a bunch of…" She glanced up at him again.

"Bullshit," Andy offered.

"Bullshit about me, to keep him from feeling any sympathy for me. They did the same with everybody. I was just an experimental subject. They wanted them to think of me as a machine."

Danny's mouth twisted. "Who looked like a little girl."

"They explained that. They have explanations for everything. Your father's done wonderful things while he worked for IO. Amazing things. This was the first time he'd been involved in the darker side of the Shop. He had no reason to suspect. He thought he was doing the right thing."

"What's this about trading his life for yours?"

"The project was broken up years ago, and I was… confined. That was eight years ago. The next time Andy saw me was at daycare. He thought maybe meeting me wasn't an accident, that maybe I'd come for him. He set up this elaborate hoax to find out the truth. Andy, do you still have it?"

"The scrambler? Yes. I was going to give it back tomorrow."

"Can you fetch it for Dan? Let him see it?"

When he came back, they were in the dining room, facing each other across the table. He set it down between them, then sat at the head of the table, a spot equidistant from his son and his... _love interest, I suppose_.

She picked it up, examined the indicator, then slid it across to Dan. "If you haven't seen one of these yet, it's called a scrambler. It's part of IO's secret R and D department, what they call 'proscribed tech.' What you need to know right now is that this gadget can crash any kind of electronics, from cellphones to supercomputers. That includes what IO put into me. The way I'm wired up, turning that thing on me would likely fry me. He showed up with it at daycare two Fridays ago and said he was going to kill me. Then he demanded some answers, without offering me any deal for my life." She turned to him with misty eyes. "Only, the gadget was uncharged, less dangerous than a paperweight. I could tell by the charge indicator. I didn't know if Andy knew, or if he was bluffing. Either way, if I'd come to do him harm, the safest and smartest thing would have been to kill him then. He was incredibly brave."

Dan nodded, looking at him with respect tinged with puzzlement. "Yeah. But you've known all week. What changed?"

"Finding out the scrambler had been charged when he got it. He emptied it before he faced me down. He double-bluffed me with an unloaded gun, both of us knowing it and both of us pretending we didn't, letting me think I was fooling him. He deliberately offered me his life, just to give me my chance to prove myself." Her cheeks were wet now. "How could you have risked it? What about Daniel and Drew, if you'd been wrong? You stubborn, crazy, _wonderful_ man." She dabbed at her cheeks and eyes, smearing her makeup. "God. Looking quite the seductress now, aren't I? Scuse." She got up and headed for the bathroom.

Dan looked at him. "I don't even know where to start. I've never wanted to smack you upside the head so bad in my life. But I've never been prouder of you either. Dad…"

"I know. I can't take what she's offering. It was a weak moment. I'm damn glad you were here."

-0-

Anna opened her bedroom door to find her husband lying on his side facing her, eyes open.

"You're back."

She slipped off her shoes. "Just because I said, 'Don't wait up,' doesn't mean I'd leave you sleeping alone your first night home. Or that I wouldn't wake you." The dress slid over her head. Slipping into the bed in lace bra and panties, she reached for him, tentative, waiting for his move.

He wrapped arms around her and pulled her close, tucking her head under his chin. "Went well, I take it?"

She let out a breath, softly, luxuriating in his warmth. "Better than I planned. I've been walking a bit of a tightrope with him, and I wasn't sure of the best course of action if he should make that serious pass. I intended to confront him tonight with what I knew and offer myself to him, which I was sure he'd refuse. Turning sex with him into payment of a debt would repel him and make him leery of testing my willpower, I thought. If Dan was keeping his father company, I'd just have to be a little more subtle about my offer. Not _too_ subtle," she said, smiling into his chest, "more like embarrassed in front of Dan but determined to go through with it, you know? Same result."

His fingertips stroked her spine gently. She felt her heartrate skip a beat to keep time with his. "So?"

"So, something even better happened. When I got there, Dan's car wasn't in the drive. But when Andy opened the door, I heard him out of sight in the kitchen." She reached up and rested her hand on his neck. "That gave me an opportunity for a double bluff, acting as if I didn't know Dan was there and I thought I was alone with Andy. I threw myself at him like a cat in heat. Dan stepped out of the kitchen just in time to keep Andy from carrying me into his bedroom. They were both embarrassed beyond words. Dan shares Caitlin's misgivings about the two of us, and he thinks his father is tempted to take advantage of a damaged young girl who's clinging to him out of some weird psychological need. With his son keeping watch, Andy will never dare test my willingness again." She reached behind her and guided one of his hands to the strap of her bra, and rested her hand on his while he undid the hooks. Then she drew his hand down her back to the panties. "Tear them, if you want. I put these on tonight for you. No one else. It was never going to go any other way."

-0-

"You're awful quiet." Caitlin turned off the interstate at the exit that would take them to San Diego International.

Dan shifted against the passenger door. "Kind of tired, I guess. Shoulder's bothering me, too."

"That's not all that's bothering you. I really wasn't spying on you. I just got worried when Adrienne told me she was meeting you at Beliz Park."

"I believe you. Really." A pause. "I'm a little surprised you guys are so close. Seems…"

"Unnatural?" The headlights of an oncoming car lit her face. She was smiling. "I can't be jealous of her. I know she'll always be a part of your life."

"So will you," He said automatically.

The glance she gave him spoke volumes. But she turned back to her driving without a word.

Caitlin's cellphone chimed on the seat between them. She glanced down, but didn't reach for it. It chimed again.

It chimed a third time.

"Aren't you gonna answer that?"

"I don't like talking on the phone while I'm driving. You catch it, if you want."

He picked it up and looked at the display. _Speak of the devil._ He hit the receive button. "Hello, Adrienne."

"_Danny? I must have… are you on Kat's phone?_"

"Yeah. She's driving me to the airport."

"Hi, Adrienne," Kat said without taking her eyes off the road. The traffic was picking up as they neared the airport.

He leaned against the door again. "She doesn't want to talk while she's driving. Something on your mind, or just call to chat?"

"_I'm on break."_ He could hear the muffled beat of the music now. "_I just wanted to say 'thank you' and give her a kiss over the phone. Who'd ever have guessed? On top of all her other talents, she's a badass too._"

His grip on the phone tightened. "She did save the day, didn't she?"

Her voice softened. "_I had a good time today, Danny._"

"Except for the part where you were almost gang-raped and killed."

Caitlin gave him a sharp glance.

"Sorry," he went on, his voice lower. "Next time I'll take you somewhere safer, like inside a lion's cage."

Kat reached over to pat his knee. He tensed for a moment, but she didn't change to a love goddess. _My anger isn't making her uneasy, just sympathetic. What happened today didn't shake _her_ world._

"_Danny._" Adrienne's voice grew closer, somehow. He remembered that sometimes she held her phone in both hands for extra privacy, one covering her ear, the other her mouth; he'd often wondered what secrets she was keeping from him. "_You did everything you could._"

"And it wasn't nearly enough, was it?"

"_You're not the first person to find himself in that position. Everybody finds something that's beyond them, sooner or later._" The noise of the club returned for a moment, and he could hear someone talking indistinctly. A pause."_Danny, I have to go. Call me from work. Can you?_"

The only time he was sure of reaching her after his shift would be late at night. If he could get the use of an outside line, the low traffic volume would almost guarantee that the conversation would be monitored, he thought. "We'd have to be careful what we say."

"_Hmmph. I have some practice with that. Don't worry, I won't mention any girlfriends – yours or your father's._" Her voice softened again. "_Seriously. Call. Give Kat a kiss. Tell her it's from me._" She disconnected.

Kat gave his thigh a gentle squeeze. "Everything okay?"

He looked her over in the shifting light. She was dressed in blue jeans, pink tee, and a denim jacket. She wore the clothing like she was modeling it. Even disregarding her spectacular looks and figure, the girl was flawless, from her hair and skin to the way she rested her hand on the wheel. He was sure he knew men who would do almost anything to have a girl like this sitting beside him with an almost possessive hand resting on his leg. When the vehicle stopped at a light, she turned to him, her green eyes large and soft and sympathetic, and he knew that if he leaned towards her, he'd get the kiss he'd been jonesing for since he'd met her.

He had absolutely no desire to do so.

He realized he was angry with _her_.

"Fine," he mumbled. "Adrienne sends love. And thanks."

She smiled. The light changed, and she took her hand off his leg and put them both on the wheel as she navigated through airport traffic to the terminal. The smile froze on her face when they arrived out front and he immediately grabbed his bag and got out of the car with a curt word of thanks.

On the flight to Boulder, he pondered his reaction. Kat had saved him a severe beating at the very least, and possibly saved the lives of all three of them. He certainly hadn't been angry with her when she and Sarah had come charging in to pull them out of danger. It was only after she'd ridden in to save the day and left again that he'd felt this hot resentment building up inside him.

Was it because she was a girl? He'd never served with a female in combat, but he'd met plenty in the Service and in the Sandbox performing intel as well as support and logistics roles. He'd never felt any misgivings about their competence just because they had tits. He knew other nations' armed forces had female grunts, and intellectually he was okay with the idea of going on patrol with one. At least two of his bosses were now women, and Adams had said Ferris hunted with the team. Dan was reserving judgment on that, but was ready to be impressed. Ferris seemed very serious about her work, and didn't seem the type to take crap off anybody - anybody not above her in the chain of command, anyway.

So what was the problem?

It occurred to him that the dark feelings he had about his girlfriend as she'd driven out of the park today were maybe the same ones he'd felt the day before, when she'd walked out alone to face the hoods loitering at her car, leaving him behind, safe. And as the plane passed over that point on the map where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, he brought those feelings into sharper focus.

It wasn't because Kat was a girl; it was because she was _his_ girl.

He huffed in amusement, drawing a momentary glance from the stranger beside him. _Is that what this is all about? Because she doesn't need a big strong man to protect her?_

_Or, at least, not this one, _he thought, remembering the Ace of Spades. Then: _she needs the same sort of protection from me. She doesn't need a man to stand between her and someone with a gun, but she needs all the help she can get to stay free of IO._ He remembered the look she'd given him after he'd told her about diverting Jared's attention away from Roxy's appearance at Arena's; it had made him feel very proprietary and in charge. And the conversation after, especially how she'd blushed over the part about being a match for him.

He remembered sticking his head out the kitchen doorway to see sweet little Annie wrapped around his father, on their way to what promised to be some _wild _sex, and flashing for just a moment on the thought of holding Kat in his arms the same way, and her kissing him with the same abandon, the same promise. _These girls don't do half measures. Could a girl as innocent as Kat…_

"_She backed him up to the pump and snogged him. When she let go, he was her slave."_

He shook his head, a gesture his seat mate ignored. He resolved to get a look at that damned video and see for himself as soon as his clearance was confirmed. He also resolved to call Kat at the terminal and apologize for his rude behavior.

But he had a reception committee waiting as soon as he entered the terminal: not his former driver, but Jeff Adams and Anderson. They turned for the exit as soon as he reached them. "If you've got bags," Jeff said, "somebody will pick them up later. We're in a hurry."

_At ten o'clock on a Sunday night? _"No, just my carryon." Dan fell into step with them. "What's going on?"

"We've got a lead. We're on our way to a full briefing. We'll talk then."

Ice clutched his heart. "You found them?"

"Not yet. But it looks like maybe they didn't run very far before they went to ground."


	8. Closing In

Sunday September 24 2006  
Boulder

Dan's companions refused to elaborate on the way from the airport to Central, sitting silently the whole forty-minute ride. Once inside the complex, the car drove past the small surface lot and headed for the larger underground one. Adams and Anderson flanked him as he got out of the car, looking, to Dan's uneasy mind, more like guards than companions.

He lifted his carryon. "Can I ditch this in my room first?"

"Bring it with you," Adams said. They set off in the opposite direction, away from the housing annex and classrooms.

He strove to keep his appearance calm and confident while his thoughts spun. Had Jared changed his mind and gone to someone with his story? Or had the two dustups at Belize Park generated attention that had led to Kat being ID'd? He cursed himself for ever leading her into the public eye. _Idiot. Of course somebody spotted her. Even in California, how many girls like her could there be?_

Desperately, he wondered if he was being led to an interrogation room. He'd heard stories about IO's methods; he had no illusions about his ability to withhold information. His step faltered, and Anderson glanced back. He quickened his pace again, unable to think of anything better to do than bluff to the end.

They turned a corner at an intersection, and Dan recognized their destination: the auditorium. He carefully took a deep breath and let it out.

The hall was half-filled by a hundred men and women clumped together in small groups and talking in low voices. He noted that there wasn't much mingling between genders, even in so official a setting. He spotted Jared and Watts and another man from his group near the front row. The low dais at the front was furnished with a podium and a long table, where Monroe and Ivery and a few people he didn't recognize were sitting.

The three of them continued towards the front of the hall. Dan joined his classmates, and was surprised to see Anderson continue on with Jeff to the dais and take a seat at the table next to the podium.

Jared nodded towards the ex-lawman. "Guess not everybody leaves their work behind on the weekend. Hear he came back from Pennsylvania this morning and filled Jeff's ear - with something he picked up from his cop buddies, I think."

He frowned. "Jeff was here this morning?"

"He's been here all weekend, I think."

Dan advanced to the edge of the platform and caught Jeff Adams's eye. "Where's Ferris?"

The second-in-command's face was a mask. "Steamboat Springs. Skiing trip. With her boyfriend, I think. She'll be here Monday morning, along with a dozen other last-minute arrivals. We'll hold another briefing for them. But we want to get this op rolling soonest." He raised his voice to address the crowd. "All right, take seats. Let's get started."

As the last of the audience picked seats, the auditorium door opened and Director Colby rolled through, followed by his blonde aide. As he traveled down the aisle towards the podium, Jeff pulled out a chair to make a place at the table before he glanced at the lip of the ten-inch platform. He started to step off, apparently to pull Colby's chair up, but the senior man waved him off and set his chair's brake alongside the front row. The man in the aisle seat stood, smiling at the blonde. Ignoring her protests, he found a seat elsewhere, and she sat beside her boss. The room settled, waiting.

"All right," Jeff said from the podium. "They say fresh eyes sometimes look at a familiar object and right away they'll see something others miss. One of our new fish has made a discovery that leads us to believe that the Lynch Mob is still operating in the States, and might give us a lead on their recent movements." He nodded to Anderson.

The ex-cop stood and took Jeff's place at the podium, the way he looked over the crowd told Dan he was used to public speaking. "Okay. Well, everybody knows we've been looking for tracks the Twelve-fives might have left in the criminal system, but we've been coming up empty. It's not necessarily because they haven't left any. There's a lot of data out there, and we're kind of fuzzy on what we're looking for, so even a first-rate computer search can only trim the possibilities a little. What we needed is something to look for that's trademark to these little… to these individuals.

"The CSI and Intelligence types have been pulling their hair out looking for a way to identify a Twelve-five's spoor at a crime scene. They like to hurt, but that's far from unique. They're hardest on those they perceive to be the greatest threat, seems like: the heaviest-armed men got the worst of it from them at Westminster and Chula Vista. Again, nothing we can get traction on; well-armed punks get killed every day. The investigators have been wracking their brains for some other tag they can look for, sifting through crime scene reports, but so far, zip. One of them said to me, 'they don't leave a thing behind, not a hair or a frickin skin cell. I'm not sure they even sweat.'

"He was joking, but a light bulb went off over my head, and I checked that statement out. The only physical evidence we have of a Twelve-five at a crime scene are a couple of smudged prints at Westminster, in the sweat of one of Devereaux's victims. She didn't leave DNA of any sort at the scenes, the getaway vehicle, or the safe house they used; the other one, 'Dixie', left nothing at Chula Vista. And no detectable attempts to clean up. They really don't shed or excrete, seems like. So, in a way, no evidence was evidence.

"I started looking into recent cases of violent crime where the perp _should_ have left forensic evidence but didn't. That still left more than we could reasonably check out. I sounded out a friend of mine in PSP about it, being as vague as possible, hoping they were working something I might audit. Right away, he mentioned an investigation, a _big_ one, that's an open file from coast to coast and high on the FBI case list as well. But everyone's been trying to downplay it and keep the media from getting wind, for reasons I can lay out a little later."

Anderson took a sip of water while the audience looked at each other. Even the new recruits understood IO's rigid secrecy regarding Specials; exposure of the Genesis Project by other government agencies could be as disastrous as anything the media might do with the story.

"It started three weeks after the Chula Vista raid, in Murrieta, a little town just seventy-five miles to the north. Police called to a rental house discovered a week-old murder. Multiple. They weren't sure how many victims at first, because only one of the bodies was whole. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the kitchen were sprayed with human hamburger."

Anderson paused to check the effect of his statement, and seemed a little disappointed at the lack of response. Apparently he'd forgotten his audience were mostly combat vets, not cops. Dan remembered all too well the human targets he'd hosed with his chain gun. After a moment, the ex-cop went on. "The victims were identified by DNA and ID in the house. Three men. Alexander Dibagio, a.k.a. 'Ace,' and his two brothers, Ben and Charles. All small-time East Coast mobsters who do occasional gun deals. They were associated with…"

Anderson was still talking, but his voice faded from Dan's hearing.

_Ace. Ben. Sharl._

_Somebody beat you to it._

"The back bedroom looked to have been the scene of quite a little party. The floor was littered with used condoms and homemade bondage equipment. A heavy brass bed, with lots of attach points for restraints. The headboard and footboard were scarred up, and matching metal traces were in several sets of handcuffs they found. Lots of body fluids." He leaned forward slightly. "But none from their playmate. The investigators had been ready to conclude the brothers had been using one another… but then they turned up the evidence in the car inside the garage."

Something in Anderson's tone produced the stir he'd seemed to have been expecting earlier. Half the men and women in the auditorium seemed to be holding their breath.

"Torture implements. Tools with human blood and bone fragments imbedded, several individuals. Syringes and irritant agents like window cleaner and peroxide. Pictures and other souvenirs from previous victims. All female. Forty years' worth." He paused for another sip of water. "At least forty-four women since nineteen sixty-eight. Only half of them have been identified. Of those, not one body was ever found. But six men are sitting on death row for the murders of women now identified as these men's victims. Four others have already been executed. Six states have placed stays on possible wrongful convictions until all the more recent victims are identified."

_The wolf brothers, torturing and killing doe after doe, year after year. But their luck ran out when they crossed paths with a __real__ predator._

"But none of that solves the mystery of these men's deaths. What were they doing here, and what happened? They have a history in the gun trade, but their criminal organization is exclusive to the Eastern Seaboard; the West Coast has its own arms cartel, and the two groups respect each other's turf. First theory was that the brothers had come out here to do a private deal, pissing in the other guys' yard. All their identified victims disappeared east of the Ohio River, but while they were here, they must have decided to mix a little pleasure with business. They disposed of the body prior to the meet at the house, which went very bad when the West Coast cartel got wind of it and decided to make an example. There were still a few holes in the story, such as a lack of forensic evidence or souvenirs of the victim from the back bedroom. The lube on the sheets was artificial, and of uncommon composition. There were forensic traces in the bedroom and the rest of the house from several other people, but all but two of them turned out to be former residents. But it held up fairly well – for about three days, when the authorities were contacted by George and Tran Thi Murray, of Cleveland, Ohio.

"The Murrays are in their late fifties. In nineteen ninety-four, their daughter, Lee Ann Murray, disappeared while hitchhiking home from NYU on spring break. Three days after the murders in Murrieta were discovered, they got an envelope in the mail, postmarked New York City, containing a short note and their daughter's class ring, last seen on her finger twenty-two years before." Anderson looked down at the podium, apparently consulting his notes for the first time. "The note said, '_Your daughter was kidnapped and killed by three brothers named Dibagio, and buried in a shallow grave in the woods half a mile from a cottage they own or rent in the Poconos. It's located on or near Route Five-eleven north of I-80, within an hour's drive of four good-sized towns. She was very brave. Her last thoughts were of you, and her final plea to her captors was for you to have this and know her fate. I pray this does not arrive too late for you both, and that it gives you some comfort._' It was unsigned. The ring had been expanded from size six to a nine, and showed heavy wear. DNA on the setting matched Charles Dibagio, six-two and two seventy-five, the only whole corpse at the scene. The same day, Bill Bennetti, the Dibagios' boss, starts vomiting blood in the back seat of his limo and taps out before his people can get him to a hospital. Coroner ruled natural causes, but it seems a very weird coincidence." Anderson shuffled his papers. "They found the cottage, by the way. And her, along with fourteen others in the woods around. The earliest identified victim disappeared in nineteen seventy-nine. Photos found in Murrieta show them each inside the cottage. The interior doesn't look to have been redecorated since they bought it, except for the addition of… some hardware." The man suddenly looked uncomfortable. Dan wondered what else he'd seen in those old photos. "Judging by those photographs, there are still four victims nearby who haven't been found yet.

"Back to the murder scene, and here we finally get some luck. Headquarters acquired the full report this morning, and we've been going over it, and found some very interesting stuff. I mentioned that two DNA samples in the house hadn't been identified by the police. We did our own checking, and found one match: John Lynch, Ace of Spades."

The sound that passed through the hall was like wind in the trees.

"The other, also male, showed a strong consanguinity to Lynch. His only living relative is his son, Robert, Jack of Spades. The Murrieta sample doesn't precisely match the one we have on file for him, though. Best guess is that the lab mishandled it.

"Of the victim, as I said, we found no biologicals. But we did find some interesting evidence on the bodies. Specifically, their injuries. First up is Charles Dibagio, who looks to have been wearing Lee Ann Murray's class ring on his left pinky for the last twenty years. Blunt trauma to the abdomen, hard enough to crack a couple vertebrae and crush his abdominal aorta. In the photos, the body's midsection looks _dented_. Coroner says sledgehammer force. Bruises indicate a blow from a fist, however. His neck was broken, too. Knuckle spacing on the abdomen, and bruises on the jaw and neck indicate a very small hand, possibly adolescent female. Yeah." He nodded to the murmuring crowd.

_Somebody beat you to it._

"Ace was asphyxiated by a crushing blow to the windpipe, then decapitated post mortem. Note that the head wasn't cut off. It was torn loose like a drumstick. Bruise on the shoulder is probably from a foot. The head is pretty beat up, but the police picked up some more postmortem bruising around the neck and under the jaw, same hand pattern as Charles's killer.

"Last but not least is Ben Dibagio. Don't know what his special sin was, but he paid for it dearly. The man was literally torn to shreds, and the pieces flung all over the kitchen. Bad for him, good for us. Bloody handprints on several objects in the kitchen, including a glass. No fingerprints, but again, finger length and tip spacing indicate a small hand. Tracks from the kitchen to the shower, judged to be those of a female about five feet in height. Bare feet, I might add, and no women's clothing found except for the remains of some leather lingerie in the bedroom... which matches outfits on several of the victims in the souvenir photos. I should mention that the playroom door was torn off its hinges, and one set of cuffs was in pieces on the shower floor. I don't know what circumstances brought them together, or how they subdued her in the first place, but it looks like their victim – and, later, their killer – was Anne Devereaux."

Escondido

Around midnight, Anna came in from the garden to find Sarah in the kitchen, barefoot and dressed in a bathrobe, making coffee. Or attempting to, rather; the girl bumped the pot into the edge of the sink before she raised it enough to clear, and the vessel trembled as she turned on the water to fill it. Anna took a quick sample of the girl's biometrics, and her forehead creased in worry as she detected the labored breathing and fast, uneven heartbeat. "Shikasin? Let me do that." She took the pot from the girl's hand. The Apache Princess's cheeks were hollow, and her complexion disturbingly pale, except for the dark flesh under her eyes. "You sit." As Anna filled the coffeemaker's basket with grounds and poured the water in, she asked, "Bad night?"

Sarah sat carefully as an octogenarian at the little bistro table. The robe was open in front, and slid off one shoulder as she leaned over the table; she didn't bother to pull it back up. Anna noted that the girl was wearing clingy gray cotton briefs and a sleeveless tank instead of her usual sweats. "Wonderful night. Right up to the last fifteen minutes." Sarah's voice was dull with misery, but Anna could hear her breathing ease as her passages opened. "Pushed it a little."

"'A little.' Where's Bobby?"

"Upstairs." She stared at the table's surface. "I had to tell him."

Anna filled a glass with tap water and set it on the table. "Start with that. You need to replenish liquid."

"How…" She gave her a weak smile. "Of course you know. Do I look that bad?"

"You look recently turned inside-out."

Sarah nodded and sipped.

"Can you eat, shikasin?" Anna poured coffee and fixed it to Sarah's preference with a teaspoon each of cream and sugar. "A little toast or something?"

"Not yet. What are _you_ doing up? Where's your husband?"

"Working. On the phone with someone in Eastern Europe; it's lunchtime there." Anna sliced a bagel and inserted it into the toaster. "How far did you get?"

Sarah sat with her hands around the mug on the table. "Second base, for about thirty seconds. Should have known better, but we were doing so well. I thought we were ready for some skin play. God. Almost didn't make it to the bathroom."

Anna stood at her shoulder, and said softly, "Are you sorry you started this?"

"Not for my sake. But… you can't imagine the look on his face when I jumped up. It was worse than being sick."

"And when you told him?"

"Angry and scared. I don't know what he's going to do. That's worse than being sick too."

Anna's hyperacute hearing picked up Bobby's bare feet descending the stairs. "He's coming. Should I leave?"

Sarah gripped the mug a little tighter. "Not unless he asks you to."

Bobby appeared at the kitchen door, wearing only a pair of gym shorts. He hesitated when he saw Anna. "Private party?"

"Now that you're here, yes." Anna pointed to the table's vacant chair. "Coffee? Or privacy?"

He looked at Sarah for a moment. "Stay. I'll bet anything you're involved in this." He sat and reached for Sarah's hand, and she gave it to him with a little huff of released air that was almost a sob. He lifted her hand in his. "This okay?"

"Don't you dare start treating me like some porcelain doll." Her lashes glistened.

"Sarah, why didn't you _tell_ me?"

She shrugged. "I thought about it. More than once. But things seemed so fragile between us already."

"And keeping a secret this big from me would make that _better_?"

She stared down at their clasped hands. "I thought… oh, I don't know. This is months longer than I've ever lasted with anyone. I thought it might be the last straw. The last reason to leave me. God, did I really say that?"

"Does seem out of character." Bobby placed his other hand on the table, palm up, and wiggled his fingers in a familiar Anna-gesture. She smiled briefly as she placed her other hand in his. He squeezed them both. "What do you want from me, Sarah?"

She hesitated. "I don't know."

"Well, think about it. Place your order. Cuz it's yours, whatever it is. Sleeping separate again won't change how I feel about you."

"_No!_" She collected herself. "You think I'm doing this all for you, making some big sacrifice?" She held his eyes across the little table. "I love you. And I _want_ you. And I'm not used to giving up on having something I want."

A moment of silence, then Anna asked, "What do you want, Bobby?"

He lifted his eyes to the little blonde. "You still here?" He returned his gaze to his girl. "I want to marry you, and break the bed on our wedding night. I want to argue with you every day and make up every night. I want to raise a million kids and grandkids with you. I want to grow old with you, and die on the same day, and be buried side by side under the same stone. What do you want, Sarah?"

The toaster popped, startling them. Anna buttered the bagel in two seconds and set it between them, along with a mug of black coffee for Bobby. "Share it. Bobby, make sure she takes some, even if it's just a nibble." She rinsed her hands. When she turned from the sink, her eyes on him were soft and warm. "You are _so_ much like him, in all the right ways." She turned to the door. "I'm off to find your father. Unless he's defusing a bomb or some such, don't expect to see either of us till breakfast."

After she left, Bobby looked at Sarah, deadpan. "A woman of simple needs."

She snorted, smiled, and let go of his hands. "But urgent ones. And undeniable. If he's not defusing a bomb now, he will be." She took a swallow of her coffee. "I can't think about marriage and kids yet. That seems so far away, I can't see it."

"How far _can_ you see? Would you take a ring?"

With the cup still to her lips, she shook her head. "Right now, I can see as far as the couch, and watching one of your old black-and-whites until we fall asleep on each other's shoulders. Will it do?"

He took the mug from her hand. "It sounds like heaven."

Monday September 25 2006  
Boulder

Dan Grissom entered his quarters and shut the door behind him, feeling isolated but not alone. He couldn't be sure there were eyes and ears in here, but he kept the agitation he felt off his face and tried to act like a man who'd been up for twenty hours and had nothing on his mind but rest. He dropped his bag next to his dresser and rubbed at his face and eyes, as if trying to wake up. But his mind spun with the revelations of the past five hours in the auditorium.

Everything he thought he knew about Annie's past, and her relationship to his father, was turned upside down. The horrors she'd alluded to in her 'bedtime story' had had nothing to do with Andrew Grissom. But his father was flailing himself over an earlier ordeal she'd gone through that he'd aided and abetted. Her history of misery was even longer – and worse – than he'd thought. _How can she hang on to her sanity, after what she's gone through, much less function so successfully?_ He thought of the mangled corpses at Murrieta, and the casualties at Miramar, and the newbie Hale. _She doesn't. Not always. Sometimes, when the strain is great enough, her grip slips a little. _

Starting tomorrow, every seasoned and qualified agent IO could spare would be in the field between L.A. and the Mexican border. The area would look like a spook invasion as the Shop began turning over rocks, checking schools and license bureaus and realtors' offices, looking for evidence the Lynch mob had gone to ground in the vicinity of Murrieta. It seemed impossible that such a search would fail to turn up some leads. And if IO found them unawares…

"_They only have to make one mistake, after all. Let them leave us one little bit of information we can build on, locate them, plan a proper takedown operation." _

He could probably get the use of a phone, even at this hour. He had Kat's number, but what good would it do him here? Even if the people or machines eavesdropping on the line didn't recognize her voice, a call from IO Headquarters to an untraceable number would set off alarms somewhere, he was sure.

A soft tap at his door pulled him out of his thoughts. He would have liked to ask who was calling, but he was afraid it would make him seem jumpy. Wishing mightily for a peephole, he eased it open.

Director Colby's aide, the cute blonde named Carson, gave him a quick once-over. "Were you going to bed?"

He mentally batted aside his first reaction to her question. She hadn't shown any unprofessional interest the previous two times they'd met, and her present businesslike attitude made it unlikely this was a social call. "Just thinking about it," he said warily. "Something up?"

"If you don't mind, Director Colby would like a word with you."

Executive country was over five minutes' walk from guest accommodations. On the way, he tried to engage his guide in conversation, but her answers were short and uninformative. They passed a smallish room with a desk occupied by a man who had 'noncom' written all over him. "Hey, Will," she said. "Just taking him in to see The Man."

Will lifted an eyebrow at that, but nodded them through.

The Director of Operations' office was really a suite of rooms. A small anteroom opened into a 'business' space larger than Dan's house, with closed doors to other rooms. The office held a desk, a small breakroom-style dining area with a table for four, and a conversation area with a pair of loveseats facing each other across a low table. Dan noted that Colby's 'glory wall' was the one shared by the entrance, at the other end of the room from his desk, where he'd only get a look it as he left the room. Dan wanted a closer look at the pictures and awards, but the Director was present and waiting.

Colby gestured to one of the little couches. "Sit down, Mr. Grissom. I know it's been a long day, I won't keep you."

"Thank you, sir." Dan sat and scanned the room while trying not to look like a tourist. "What can I do for you, Director?"

Colby rested his hands on the arms of his wheelchair. "I'd like a quick first impression from you on recent events. As Jeff says, fresh eyes. Coffee?"

"Yes, thank you sir. Black." He looked over his shoulder at the blonde, Carson, expecting her to move towards the coffeemaker that was just gurgling the last few drops of fresh brew into its carafe. But Colby caught her eye and pointed to the couch opposite Dan, then swung up a tray mounted to the side of his chair and rolled to the counter while she sat.

The Director quickly filled three mugs with black coffee and set them on his tray. Dan wondered why a man so determined to ignore his handicaps kept a doting assistant like Cheryl Carson. He returned, pulling up to a spot between the two couches and setting two of the mugs on the table. "You live in Escondido, is that right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take it easy on the 'sirs' when it's just us three, okay? I'm not in your command hierarchy. You're here losing sleep as a courtesy, which I appreciate." He sipped his brew. "The business at Murrieta. First impression?"

"Those assholes deserved everything they got and more."

"Unanimous, I'm sure. And the note?"

"I'd guess the guy who wore the ring did some boasting before she got loose. Or some singing while she was working over his brothers."

"But _why_? If our theory is correct, Anne Devereaux is an agent of the so-called Resistance, an amoral little schemer who's trying to subvert Lynch and his kids to their dark cause by any means." He took a sip. "What she did to Mike Hale got her vital information. What did she get from the Dibagios? If she's what we think she is, why should she care about the other victims and their families? For that matter, what's her connection to those three men? I'm not buying a coincidence."

Dan said slowly, "There's the arms angle. Lynch masquerades as a dealer-"

"Retired dealer, big-time, who takes on an occasional private black-ops job for kicks. These guys were small-timers. They had nothing he'd want. This smacks of something personal. Between _her_ and them." Colby gave a head shrug. "So, what do we know about her? The paper trail on her is forged, but sometimes the lies you tell point at the truth you're trying to hide. Twelve-fives have to move around a lot when they're young, to cover their accelerated childhoods. That means they skip a lot of grades in primary school. It also means they never hang out with kids their age – in a sense, there _are _no kids their age. Witnesses at La Jolla agree that she had weird gaps in her academic and social education. Anne Devereaux must have been born no earlier than nineteen ninety-two, and she's been with Lynch at least since oh-four. Where would she have crossed swords with these guys in that time frame?"

"The French accent," Dan said. "Québec and New York share a border."

Colby nodded. "And a few of their victims are from upstate. Maybe." He sipped again. "Maybe they tried to kidnap her once before, and she escaped or fought them off. In that case, they'd be desperate to silence her. And they'd also look at her as unfinished business. If what they did to their other victims was just play to them, I don't want to think what they might have come up with when they were feeling vindictive." He sipped again. "This happened almost in your backyard, the mall business and Murrieta both. You might have passed one of the Lynch Mob driving down the interstate. What's your gut say? Did they go to ground almost within sight of their last hideout?"

Dan raised the cup to his lips, to give him an extra moment to think and to partly hide his face, as well as giving him an excuse to swallow. "Seems impractical. They can trip up computer searches, I get that, but I'd be worried about running across people I knew from La Jolla." He took another swallow. "The Shop is bound to pick up their trail, once they put boots on the ground." _How to warn them tonight?_

Colby smiled indulgently. "Don't be so sure. The fellows at the podium talk a good game, but whatever else it is, IO is a bureaucracy. There'll be agents beating the bushes by morning, no doubt, but a trickle, not a flood. First bottleneck will be security clearance. I don't suppose it looks that way from your corner of the Shop, but most IO personnel don't know about Specials or the Genesis Project. And no one's going to be issuing blanket clearances to send an army to Southern California. Director Baiul doesn't spread that knowledge freely, not even for a chance to round up Lynch and his runaways.

"Then there'll be turf issues to work through among those who do have clearance. Special Security, that's you guys, is already cleared for Genesis, and you're trained to engage Specials. But sending them all to So Cal means abandoning the hunt for the other eighty Specials at large. There are still people scattered throughout all three Directorates who are cleared and can be sent into theater. But first, it has to be made clear who's giving them their orders. They'll have to be seconded, detached administratively, and reassigned to Research before they can be turned loose. Most of regular Security is now cleared and trained to deal with Genactives, but, among other vital duties, they're the bodyguard force for the top dogs around here. Devereaux threatened to target senior IO management, which is why those men were cleared and trained to begin with. It might not be prudent to reassign them. Operations' direct-action teams are working through an even more thorough training program on Specials, but that program concentrates on engaging them successfully with minimum losses on both sides, not finding them on the QT. Reconnaissance-in-force is more their style. And springing them from their regular duties to hunt Gens on a hunch wouldn't be easy. They're Santini's people."

Dan set his mug down. "I'm confused. I thought you were Director of Operations."

Colby smiled a little wider. "I am. Absolutely. And Benito Santini is Associate Director of Operations. Know what that means?"

Dan thought for a moment, then shrugged. "No."

"It means, as regards the Razors and X-teams, anything Ben wants it to. And he's made his opposition to throwing his people at the Specials very clear. It would take a direct order from Ivana Baiul to pull those men off their antiterrorist duties. And I don't think she'll do it." He rubbed his chin. "I estimate we'll max out at around two hundred agents – plenty for a thorough search, though it won't happen overnight. They'll start with eyes-on inspections of public-institution databases – school rosters, hospital records and such. And we have the word out, quietly, to people in law enforcement all over the area. Not an APB, of course, just descriptions and pictures of our 'terror cell' to people we can trust to keep their mouths shut. Lynch and Fairchild, at least, are distinctive. If they appear in the public eye, it'll get back to us."

"Yeah," Dan said, trying to appear enthusiastic while his heart sank. "It's just a matter of time."

-0-

Cheryl Carson saw the Director's guest to the door. When she returned, her boss was still sitting at the coffee table. His hand dropped from his shirt pocket. "Well, Cher? Still think he's hiding something?"

"As certain as the day I met him, and every time since." She picked up her untouched mug and headed to the coffee station. She added cream and sugar, and returned to the couch.

"Oops. Sorry. Why didn't you say something?"

"Because you were working him for me, and I didn't want to interrupt or miss anything." She sipped while she looked at the wheelchair-bound man over the rim. "I bet he doesn't win at poker often. His face freezes when he's trying not to give anything away. It's a classic tell. And he doesn't try to conceal his eye dilation at all. Then there's voice stress, and his body language just _shouts_ out."

He smiled. "So, what is all that telling you, Holmes?"

"He's uncomfortable when we talk about closing in on the Lynch Mob. Not all Specials, just them. And any mention of Anne Devereaux and violence gets him so agitated he can barely control his breathing. It's going to sound crazy, but he behaves as if he knows her."

He set his mug on the table and looked over at her. "You understand what you're suggesting?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't start 'sirring' me. It's a very serious accusation. You know that. The consequences to him could be…" He seemed to think a moment. "There's no limit, really. Don't tell a soul about this, Cher. But get me his file. I want to go over it with a microscope. Meanwhile, keep an eye on him, but report only to me. We'll call it…" He twitched a smile. "'Project Wibs'."

"Wibs?"

"An in-joke, Cher. I can't explain."

"Something only a hairy-chested Operations hero could understand, I suppose."

"Absolutely." He picked up his mug. "What about me? Do I have any tells?"

"Well…" She shrugged. "It's hard to pick up any body language from you. Because of the chair."

"And?"

"And I think you've got a lot of practice keeping what you're thinking to yourself." She shifted, feeling uncomfortable and on the spot. "The only nervous habit you've got is the way you fiddle with that lighter. You don't smoke, so why do you carry it around?"

"Sentiment. It belonged to an old friend." Colby turned his chair towards the bedroom annex. "I think I'll just shower and sleep here. I don't feel up to the drive home."

In as neutral a voice as she could summon, she said, "Need any help?"

"Thanks, no," he answered, apparently oblivious to the implied offer. "I'll see you in the morning. Try to come up with some excuse to stay near Grissom."

_Great_, she thought, _just great. Now I've got orders to keep an eye on two men at opposite ends of the complex: Dan Grissom and you. _She shivered, remembering her first 'interview' with Ivana Baiul when Frank had been taken into custody after the restaurant raid. The second one, after his promotion but before his release from the hospital, had been less threatening – it had been conducted in the Director's office, in a comfortable chair without restraints, and Cheryl had been allowed to keep her clothing – but just as frightening. Frank seemed to be Director Baiul's fair-haired boy these days, but Cheryl's instructions had never been rescinded. She wasn't pressed for regular reports, and she gave Security Adviser Ruche as little information on Frank's day-to-day activities as possible, just enough to let him and his boss know she was still following orders.

She left the Director's rooms, headed for her own, wondering how long it would take her to drop off. Sometimes she had trouble finding sleep at night, wondering if someone else was watching him too, and giving very different reports. Not that he was doing anything suspicious – Chula Vista had proven his loyalty irrefutably, and he was a dedicated and conscientious worker – but in a job environment where moving a single rung up the ladder might be worth millions in salary, she wouldn't put it past some of the top execs to backstab a rival, or even set him up. She was determined to protect him as best she could.

As she showered and dressed for bed, she thought about the self-conscious offer she'd made earlier. She was prepared to do a great deal more for Frank Colby than protect him. When she'd first seen him walking the corridors on his own legs, she'd felt attraction for him as a man, an attraction her friend Ferris had tried to discourage with a story of his preference for psychos. Instead of following that advice, she'd gone to work for him, spending her days in his rooms and at his side. After Chula Vista, she'd expected to be nursemaiding a broken man. Instead, he'd seemed more vital than ever, determined to overcome his injuries and not let his disadvantages handicap him. Watching him struggling up the road to recovery without a word of complaint had melted her heart, and made her feel warm in other places as well. She was ninety percent certain that Frank was capable of sexual relations with a careful partner. She was a hundred percent sure she'd be as careful with him as he needed her to be, if only he'd give her a sign.

She settled into bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking about his eyes and his smile and his voice and his aftershave._ Ferris said if he ever gave her more than a polite smile, she'd run to a shrink. Did Chula Vista sour him on bad girls? Or on all girls? What a waste that would be._

-0-

After Cher left, Colby reached for the in-house phone and called the duty officer. "Is Gordon Phillips on duty tonight?" When the man answered in the affirmative, he went on, "Can you ask him to come to my office at his earliest convenience, please."

For Colby, Gordon Phillips's 'earliest convenience' was ten minutes later. "What's up?"

Colby looked up at the man who ran his security detail, a co-conspirator in his efforts to aid Lynch and his kids. "Sit down, Gord. Don't hover. Swear to God, you're as bad as Cheryl sometimes."

"Speaking of which."

"Sent her to bed."

"Oh?" Gordon's eyes flicked to the door leading to the bedroom.

Colby caught the movement. "No way. If I was up for that – and I'm not saying, one way or the other – but if I was, she'd be last on my list. Ivana would have a blow-by-blow before noon."

"Give her a little cred, Frank. She's been good for you."

Colby nodded. "She's useful, and good company. But she's also in Ivana's pocket, I'm sure of it. When I was taken into custody, they seized my computer and data dumped it. Think they didn't do the same to my personal assistant?"

"Frank, everybody who gets interrogated talks."

"I know that. Which means that she told them she knew I was conducting an investigation under the radar and she didn't report it. And yet, here she is, back at her old job, running my errands, fixing my coffee, and sharing my confidences. I'm very sure that didn't happen without Ivana making it _extremely_ clear to Cher who she was working for."

Gordon nodded. "So?"

"So I keep her busy and elsewhere while I do stuff that would force her to choose between me and Ivana. Gord, how do you feel about SS guys?"

"Most of them are okay." He shrugged. "Some of them, though… well, they've kinda gone over to the Dark Side."

"I have reason to suspect that one of the SS trainees may be a fellow traveler. His name is Dan Grissom. Ex-Marine. Seems like a good kid. The company line isn't sitting well with him. How much trouble for a few of your guys to bump into him socially during off-duty hours?"

"Well, there's always the range once he's cleared to carry. And the canteen. Once we meet and get friendly, we could go places without raising suspicion. Where's he from?"

"Escondido."

"Halfway between Miramar and Murrieta." Phillips gave him a dark look. "My guy Gerick was based at Pendleton, and he visits sometimes. He could invite any of us to come along, including this guy Grissom. Boys' night out."

Colby nodded. "Set it up with all prudent speed. I want this guy on board soonest, in case the op in Murrieta turns up something."

"You think it will?"

He shrugged. "I don't know where they are. Just because she was there three months ago doesn't mean they're living anywhere near. But it's possible. And I have a hunch Mr. Dan Grissom from Escondido knows our little wibs, maybe sees her regularly."

The man's brow wrinkled. "'Wibs'?"

Colby smiled at him. "Wolverine in a bunny suit."

"Heh." Phillips rose. "Frank, you know what 'escondido' means in Spanish?" When Colby shook his head, he said, "Something hidden."

-0-

Once, in one of their more cordial conversations, Ben Santini had asked Ivana, "Does anyone ever tell you you're freaking paranoid?"

With a chilly smile, she'd replied, "Only the ones who are out to get me."

Every phone call and internet post in the United States, and a large and increasing percentage of those in Europe and the rest of the world, was accessible to IO. The beyond-cutting-edge computer technology provided by the Research Directorate allowed those communications to be monitored, however briefly, and sifted for sensitive data with incredible efficiency. Much of the system's effectiveness, however, depended on those monitored not knowing how little privacy their telecommunications afforded them.

Most IO operatives knew about the automated eavesdropping system, however, and many had a good working knowledge of its capabilities. A mole inside headquarters could place calls to associates and avoid topics and keywords that would flag his conversations. So, in the heart of IO's operation, unknown to all but a handful of its personnel, communications security wore suspenders _and_ a belt.

The 'com shack' at Central held twenty eavesdroppers who sampled outgoing calls during the day that weren't flagged by the monitoring system. The operators who monitored call traffic had clearances high enough to determine whether a 'subject' was dropping hints about something classified, and they were very well paid. Procedure called for them to pay particular attention to those on opposite ends of the IO pecking order: senior executives who had access to the Shop's deepest secrets, and new fish who seemed most likely to be infiltrators for another agency, or members of a criminal organization - or simply to talk too much. Late at night, when call traffic dwindled to almost nothing, the staff was reduced to two men, usually Weyland Moore and Roger Nelsen, who spent most of their time keeping each other awake. They usually listened to every outgoing call between one AM and five, and tonight was no exception.

Even if the two of them had been miraculously burdened with more calls than they could monitor, one would have picked this guy's call to listen in on, and not only because he was brand new. Working at IO was a lonely job anyway, and the isolation from other employees forced on them by their duties and the graveyard shift they worked combined to deny them a social life. For human contact, Weyland and Roger had each other and the people they spied on, and that was about it. And this new guy, Grissom, had a _very_ interesting social life.

"Grissom's calling the ex again." Roger adjusted his earpiece and pulled his keyboard to him, in case he wanted to take a note. The first late-night conversation with 'Adrienne' had made Roger's ears twitch, because she'd mentioned Grissom's new flame, a girl named 'Kat' who worked for a 'rival firm'. He'd almost flagged Grissom and his girlfriend for further investigation. Then he'd remembered that IO had a lot of front organizations covering a wide spectrum of enterprises. Grissom had found out what this chick did for a living, Roger had decided, and had pretended to be in the same line of work to establish some common ground, that was all. The subject hadn't come up in conversation since.

"Patch me in?" Wey said hopefully.

They both glanced at the monitor, which showed no other landlines presently in use; the only number on it was the one Grissom was calling. While he listened to the phone connect and begin ringing, Roger tapped a couple of keys to allow shared access from Wey's workstation. Then he called up the new guy's dossier – not for any info on him, but for the picture of the ex. He found it and expanded it to fill the screen. He shook his head at the image, a promotional picture from the club where she worked. _Adrienne Bell. What a babe. I ever got my hands on something like this, I'd never let it go. I wonder why she dumped him? It must have been the mistake of a lifetime._

-0-

"_Danny. You're calling a little early, I'm just leaving work. See you, Tony._"

"Tony?"

"_Club security. We always get an escort to our cars, day or night._" Dan heard the DB9's engine come to life, a deep smooth hum very different from the intimidating rumble of the beast Kat drove. "_What time do you get up there?_"

"Six, seven."

"_Not much time for sleep. You should take better care of yourself. You need to be sharp at work._"

He didn't know what to say to that. These nighttime conversations with Adrienne cast his mind back to their courting days. He imagined sitting next to her in the Aston as it tooled down the dark road. "What are you wearing?"

"_What?_" She chuckled.

"What? I-" He caught it. "Eh. I was just wondering if you were dressed for the ride. I'm sure you've got the top down."

"_Of course. It's sixty degrees out. I'm wearing slacks, a rib-knit shirt, and a leather coat. I'm plenty warm. Why so solicitous? It's a little late in the relationship to start taking care of me, Danny._" He felt a burn start, but before it could really develop, she said, "_Sorry. That didn't come out the way I meant it. Really. Did Drew get to bed all right?_"

"Yeah," He answered, grateful for the change of subject. "Tucked him in before I left. Dad and the babysitter were reading him a bedtime story."

"_Hm. And what did they do together after he dropped off, do you suppose?_"

"Probably talked and drank coffee at the dining room table. I know you think different, but my father wouldn't take advantage." He hoped he sounded more convinced than he felt. But Dad had seemed very contrite after that little scene in the foyer, and had treated Annie like fine china afterwards – at least when Dan was around. _And considering what she does to men who_ _don't take 'no' for an answer…_

"_I suppose,_" she said doubtfully. "_You know, we didn't set another date._"

"Sunday again? That work for you?"

"_Sunday's fine. But maybe I should pick the place?_"

"Sure." He paused. "Sorry about that."

"_Well, now I've had time to reflect, I'm not so terrified. And lunch afterwards more than made up. But I would __really__ like to know where Sarah bought her taser pistol. My God._"

He went cold at the mention of the Queen of Spades' real name. A partial memory of an earlier phone conversation came to mind. _We talked about 'my girlfriend'. Did Adrienne call her Kat?_ "Um. Adrienne. Could you… call my girlfriend for me? You've got her number, right?" _Kat told me Adrienne called her. Which of them am I testing?_

"_Yes._" He could almost hear her thinking it through. He prayed she wouldn't mention any more names or ask questions. "_Are you two okay, Danny? Not fighting again, are you?_"

"Yeah." He held his voice steady, even though he felt lightheaded with relief. "I don't think she wants to talk with me right now. We didn't part on good terms tonight."

"_Hmp. I'll feel like I'm back in high school, but I'll do it. What's the message?_"

He took a breath and relaxed a bit. Everything was going to be all right. _She always was smart, even if she never went to college. Kat's brainy too, and not as naïve as she seems. It's __so__ easy to underestimate stubborn, beautiful women._ "Thanks. It's real short."

-0-

"What about the girlfriend?" Wey asked as soon as the phone hung up.

"Girlfriend of Adrienne's, obviously. Cozy arrangement."

"Another stripper, then. Jeez."

"No, she works somewhere else." He remembered Adrienne's 'handling instructions' to Dan from an earlier conversation. "Besides, she doesn't sound like the type."

"A lot of those girls got day jobs, Rog. And they're not all party dolls."

"Really. And how do you know that?"

Weyland grinned. "I'm a regular at Tally Ho's. The girls love me."

"Love your money, you mean. Wonder if we can get a picture of her somewhere? Maybe a club flyer."

"Professional interest, Rog?"

"Well, sure," he grinned back. "Let's see, what would 'Kat' be short for? Kathleen, Catherine, Katrina…" Then he sobered. "Wey, doesn't it seem weird that he never talks to her on the phone? I mean. He talks to his old man, he talks to his kid, he even calls his ex when she gets off work at three AM. But he never talks to Kat, even if she's three feet from the phone at his dad's house when he calls."

"You missed something there, Rog." Weyland grinned again. "The chick who comes to the house is named Marie. Our boy Danny is double dipping. Maybe he's afraid of mixing them up on the phone."

Roger blew out. "_And_ he's still seeing his ex. What a pimp."

Escondido

"Kay, Adrienne. Thanks." Caitlin lay on her bed staring up at the dark ceiling, barely visible in the light from her bedside clock and the phone display. Thaddeus the Bear was cradled in the crook of her right arm; her left hand held the phone to her ear. "But Daniel shouldn't have involved you."

"_I'm sure he wouldn't have if he felt he had a choice._" Adrienne kept her voice low. The echoes in the background indicated she was in a closet, or a larger room bare of furnishings, like a garage. "_That's why I thought I shouldn't wait till morning to call you. Are you in trouble? Either of you?_"

"Some, probably. Not the kind of trouble Daniel was in overseas." _Every bit as bad, but definitely not the same kind._ "Don't worry, we're not risk junkies. We won't take unnecessary chances." _But we may find some big risks forced on us soon, or I miss my guess._

"_How was Drew last night, after what happened?_"

"Didn't seem to faze him, except I think he's smitten by Sarah. She's all he wanted to talk about. The girl is guy-catnip, I swear. He fell asleep over Dr. Seuss."

"_Seems you see more of my son than I do anymore._" Adrienne's voice was too light. "_Never saw myself becoming a Sunday father. Good grief, listen to me chattering away at four AM like it's tea time or something."_ She heard a car door chime and a thunk._ "Go back to sleep, Kat. I'll call noonish._"

When the call ended, Caitlin got up and dressed, very sure she was done with sleep. She stepped out of her room and saw a flickering blue glow from from the loft at the end of the hall and a soft hiss that she guessed was the TV. She went down the back stairs to the first floor. Dim light spilled into the hallway from the kitchen. The only sound was a faint hum from the refrigerator. She padded halfway down the hall to Mr. Lynch and Anna's room.

At the door, she paused with her knuckle an inch from the panel, suddenly embarrassed and uncertain. Anna never slept, and her hearing was acute enough to pick up conversations all over the house; the one between Kat and Adrienne should have brought the little cyber to her side already. But Caitlin knew that when Anna was… engaged with her husband, she was oblivious to anything else. The room on the other side was silent, but… She resisted the impulse to press her ear to the door. Deciding to wait until morning, she turned and nearly knocked Bobby over.

"Bobby," She whispered fiercely, "what are you doing up?" She was doubly embarrassed: not only was she sure he'd seen her loitering at his father and stepmother's bedroom door in the middle of the night, she saw that he was wearing only a pair of cotton shorts briefer than his swim trunks. "Where's Sarah?"

"No need to whisper," he said in a normal speaking voice. "You'd have to pound on the door to get their attention right now. Sarah's asleep on the couch upstairs."

"No, I'm not." Sarah padded down the hall in a long robe. "What's up?"

"Trouble."

-0-

"So," John Lynch said an hour later, sitting at the dining table with Caitlin, Bobby, and Sarah. "Dan says a bunch of old friends from school are coming to town, and they're hoping to look you up. That's a clear enough message, I think." His fingers stroked Anna's forearm and wrist as she refilled his mug, but his expression remained serious and thoughtful. "We haven't been found, but something has led IO to this area. We've left tracks somehow." He raised an eyebrow at Caitlin. "Any possibilities come to mind?"

She shrugged. "We had a little trouble at the park this weekend. I thought it was covered, but maybe not." Quickly, she described the run-ins with the young toughs Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and her suspicions about how Daniel had "fixed" things. "We're never going back to that park."

"That resolution should have been enough to solve the problem if it had been a joint one, and you'd made it Saturday afternoon. Not now." He stood. "I've got to make some calls right away."

Bobby stood as well. "What are we going to _do_ about this? Move again?"

"No. They're making an all-out effort to locate and trap us. I propose we let them."


	9. Gathering Storm

Monday September 25 2006

Boulder

International Operations Central Headquarters

"No." Ferris checked the battery in her PDA without looking up. "I appreciate the enthusiasm, Dan, and I understand that the search area's your home turf. But all you rookies are going to stay here and continue your training. Even Anderson, and he's the one put us on their trail."

"I just feel like I could be useful. Like I should be there."

She looked him over. The new guy was acting like he had a personal stake in the coming op, and as eager as any she'd seen, almost hyper at being left behind. _This one's going places,_ she decided."Understood. But we learned the hard way not to throw untrained people against this bunch." She tested the draw of her Glock, and made sure her Lethe dispenser was cased in her pocket. Then she looked up at Dan, and she smiled. "Don't take it so hard. There are still plenty of Specials at large. Taking down the most dangerous of them first is a good thing. If we're lucky, this could be the shortest assignment of your career."

Escondido

"_No._ I'm not wearing another freaking IO dog collar. Ever." Roxanne folded her arms and glared up at Caitlin, the picture of stubborn determination. She dropped into a couch in Sarah's bedroom 'lounge'. "God, I'd kill for a smoke right now."

Caitlin held the cancellation collar in both hands. "Roxy, you know it's not like the other ones. It doesn't mess you up, it _protects_ you. See, I've got mine on."

"Of course I see it. It gives me goosebumps all over. No."

"Look." She opened and closed the one in her hands. "It's just a regular jewelry clasp. It doesn't lock. You can take it off with two fingers." She rubbed the flat square links between her fingers. "It's even pretty, kind of."

"No sale."

Caitlin looked in appeal to Sarah, who gave her an eyebrow shrug. "Don't expect me to help convince her. I don't want one either."

"_Guys. _What if they lure us into another brain-scrambling trap? We'd be helpless."

Roxy gripped one of the couch's massive wooden arms. "Uh huh. And how do you know that thing around your neck isn't tunable or something? Turns back into a slave collar with one push of a button? That easy-open catch won't count for much when you fall over with your eyes crossed and drool spilling out of your mouth."

Roxy and Sarah were both staring at her. She realized she was grasping the choker around her neck as if she were about to yank it off. She lowered her hand. "I don't know. But I know that trap at the warehouse would have worked if Mr. Colby hadn't warned us. I don't want to give them a chance to try again."

"Pfft." Roxy drew the cigarette case out of her leather jacket and put it away again. "The house is locked down, Kat, remember? Can't take a step out the door, front or back. Even the roof is off limits. I don't think we have to worry about walking into a trap." She folded her arms again and blew a lock of purple hair off her forehead. "We just have to worry about going bughouse crazy before IO loses interest in Escondido. Half a day in detention, and I feel like busting out already."

-0-

Marco Bennetti approached the front door of _that_ house like a man on his way to the gallows. The insulated bag holding the stack of pizzas seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and his heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He whispered a little prayer that one of the girls would answer the door, even though he flushed every time one of them gave him a polite word or a smile. Better that than one of those menacing boys or the big scary guy with the scarred-up face. And he _especially_ didn't want to come face-to-face with the insane little blonde with the cool blue eyes. He didn't know what had happened after he'd shown those pictures he'd snapped on his cellphone to his Uncle Billy and, later, the old guy at the wedding. But he knew those pictures had started a war of some sort, and something bad had happened to that girl, maybe made her crazy, and his Uncle Billy and that guy at the wedding were dead now. And making him wet his pants and chopping his car into suitcase-sized pieces hadn't settled her score with him, clearly. When she smiled at him sometimes, he was sure she was thinking about opening his throat with her teeth. Every time Marco came to this house, he was half certain he wouldn't be leaving, just a wrong look or word or gesture away from being killed.

He missed the doorbell button the first time. When he found it on the second try, he could hear the door chime echoing in the big room on the other side of the door. It was awful quiet in there, he thought. He listened for approaching footsteps, or people sounds of any kind. He was still listening when the door latch clicked, making him jump.

The door swung partway open. From behind it, the little blonde's smiling face briefly appeared. "Marco. Right on time, as always." Her head then withdrew behind the half-open panel, which swung just wide enough to let him in. "Come on in and put them on the table."

His legs turned to water, remembering the last time she'd spoken those words. He wondered what she was wearing. If she stepped from behind the door wearing that skimpy little bikini, he would drop the pies and bolt for the car.

She didn't step from behind the door. "Well, come _on_."

He swallowed and took a shaky step inside. Then another. She shut the door behind him, and he let out his breath when he saw her in jeans and a little blue tank. She led him to the table while he looked around the big room. No witnesses, but he supposed that didn't really matter. He stepped past her and set the bag on the table and pulled the boxes out. "Forty-five even."

Her soft voice at his shoulder froze him. "I know you're not a bad person, Marco. You're just a lonely guy who saw a bunch of hotties sunbathing on the other side of a fence and took a few pictures. I know how it is when guys get together. You couldn't resist showing those pictures off and inventing a story to go with them. You couldn't know you were showing them to the wrong person, or how one thing would follow another. I don't want to hold you responsible. But, sometimes, when I look at you, I remember the hours I spent with your cousins, and my hands curl into claws."

He stopped breathing.

"Seeing you afraid doesn't make it better. It reminds me of how afraid I was, and I just get angrier. The guys all know. They feel like they should have protected me or something, and they take it out on you. But I don't want things to go on like this anymore. Would you be willing to do me a favor, Marco?"

He swallowed. "What?" His voice sounded a little choked, he thought. He turned to her and blinked. She was giving him a look he'd never seen on her before. The plastic smile was gone, and she looked… almost kind.

"Nothing dangerous or criminal. Two things, actually. First. We like our privacy around here, and you're just about the only stranger who's ever been inside the house. Some people may come around the parlor asking questions. Not likely, but possible. Be helpful, but don't tell them anything about us. Since you're the only guy who's ever delivered here, you can tell them what you like without someone contradicting you later."

"I told you before. I won't say anything to anybody."

She nodded. "I believe you. I always have. I just prefer the way you say it this time. Thank you." She reached into her front jeans pocket. "Now for the real favor. When do you get off work?"

"Uh, eleven, about."

"Do you know any grocery stores open that late? That sell fresh produce?"

He blinked. "Sure. Albertson's on Mission, I think. Twenty-four-seven."

"Good." Her hand came out of her pocket with a small pack of bills folded over a sheet of notebook paper. "That should cover the list and the pizza, with plenty left over. Keep the change. Do this for me, Marco. Do something nice for me, so I can meet you at the door with a different smile. For both our sakes."

-0-

Anna shut the door behind the delivery boy and listened to his footsteps fading down the sidewalk. They were careful and measured, very unlike his usual headlong flight back to his car. Softly she said, "So now you know."

"So now I know." Caitlin sat up from the couch that faced away from the table, and set her book facedown across its back. "All this time, I thought he was just shy."

"Roxanne and Sarah are the last to know. I don't think this is a good time to let them in on it."

"But it was a good time for me, apparently."

"You're the team leader. I should already have told you; it's a security issue. But you… I thought it would lead to questions."

"It surely does." The big redhead stood, crossed to the table, and picked a chair. She pointed at the one opposite, and Anna sat. "I won't ask what they did. If you think I should know, I'll listen, but tell me before I touch the pizza, okay?"

Anna shook her head. "You don't need any details. And I don't want to relive them. But, before you think to ask, Luis was a witness and a fellow victim, never a participant. He was supposed to die with me and Jack."

"They didn't pick you off the street at random, Anna. What were you to them?"

"A way to get to Jack, that's all. And entertainment while they waited for him. If you want to know why they wanted Jack, I'd suggest googling 'Newtown disaster,' or something similar. Then you'll know more about it than I do, likely."

Caitlin opened a box, looked inside, and selected a slice. "I sense an evasion, big sister."

Anna met her eyes for a moment. "I imagine you do."

"If I asked Mr. Lynch, would he tell me the truth?" She took a bite and chewed.

"Probably. But think hard before you ask, hon. Seriously. I guarantee you'll learn more than you want to."

"Speaking of unnecessary requests. The only thing in the fridge we're almost out of is milk, and the freezer and pantry are so full I don't know where you'll put anything new. What are you doing with this guy?"

"Practicing a little misdirection. The boys and I have been yanking Marco's leash awfully hard. It was either scare him into silence or kill him, I thought. But it's gone too far. It's hard, living in fear. I don't want him to be tempted to inform on us as a way out, if IO gives him an easy opportunity. So I changed tack, offered him forgiveness. He wants that, I can tell. I think he'll keep his mouth shut, especially if he gets smiles from me and a beautiful redhead when he brings back the groceries." The little cyber tapped her cheek with a finger. "And, you know, I think I'll send him home with something from the freezer. I don't think he eats right very often."

Kat swallowed the last of the slice and opened a second box. "Not long ago, I told someone that a machine intelligence that could mimic human behavior well enough to fool us would have to know us better than we know ourselves. I didn't follow that thought to its logical conclusion."

Anna reached into the box, startling her table companion. She selected a slice and brought the point of the wedge to Caitlin's lips. "And what conclusion was that, computer geek?"

"That such a machine intelligence, programmed at the most basic level to psych out human beings and deceive them, would necessarily mature into an adept, shameless, and habitual manipulator." Kat took a huge bite of the proffered slice.

"Guilty as charged. I'll lie to anyone, twist anyone's thoughts and feelings to get what I want. Jack taught me not to break promises, but people who get a promise out of me sometimes find that I didn't promise exactly what they thought. I'm devious and sneaky and I don't follow anyone's moral code but mine."

The bigger girl wrapped her hand around Anna's, the one holding the pizza, and brought it closer. "And I love you anyhow. We all do. Maybe because we know what it is you want." She took another bite and let go Anna's hand.

The little cyber smiled, set the remains of the slice on the box lid, and folded her arms on the table. "On that note. Jack and I have been discussing a little mission for you."

Tuesday September 26 2006

Boulder

At lunch, Dan sought solitude once again in the little break area near the classrooms rather than share the cafeteria with his classmates. He knew he was developing a reputation as a loner – a very bad thing for a man who was part of a group expected to put their lives on the line for each other – but he found it increasingly difficult to deal with them as they fell further under Ivery's and IO's influence. When they spoke of impatience to get in the field and help bring down the Lynch Mob, he had to leave the room. He was a soldier trapped behind the lines in enemy uniform.

If Jared and Watts and the others had been monsters or Nazis, it would have been much easier to sit with them and listen to their talk, to smile at the appropriate times and add an insincere remark from time to time. But they were good, solid men who cared about people and thought they were doing the right thing, men he felt he really could trust with his life – at least until his true loyalties were discovered. Even knowing his cause was the right one, he felt guilty sharing their company, and apprehensive over what he might have to do to safeguard Kat and her 'family' – and his own. Sitting in this quiet little alcove, shuffling the deck of cards in his hand and counting the friends' faces among them, he had never felt so alone.

Then, mysteriously, the bad mood dissolved, replaced by a strange feeling of being watched. But it wasn't the chill sensation of surveillance; it was warm and expectant, as if he was waiting for an old friend. Or as if Kat had called his name from a distance. He felt the corners of his mouth turn up slightly.

He heard footsteps, light yet somehow arresting, approaching from the hallway to the right. He stirred and felt the seat's pressure lesson as he got his feet under him, preparing to stand. Then the visitor rounded the corner, and his breath stopped as he beheld a vision. The world around him disappeared, leaving room only for him and the most beautiful woman the world had ever known.

"Whups," she said, her perfect voice making the simple expletive sound like music. She regarded him with violet eyes that shone with a depth greater than any gem's. "I didn't expect anyone in here." Then she seemed to withdraw somehow, to shrink without getting smaller in a way that was eerily familiar, and he realized who his visitor was.

He was on his feet with no memory of leaving his seat. She was still in the corridor, studying him with a Mona Lisa smile. He couldn't leave her there alone. He took an involuntary step towards her. She held up a hand, still smiling, and he found a smile of his own to offer her. He stopped, obedient and adoring.

She shrank again, enough for him to see the wall behind her, at least, and realize they were in a public place, not a bedroom. But she was still a stunningly beautiful girl, a girl a man would do anything to possess. "Better," she said. "Hi. Who are you?"

For a moment, he couldn't remember his name. He swallowed. "Dan."

"Dan, have you got change for the machines? Enough for a granola bar and a Diet Pepsi?"

He would have broken into the machines and emptied them to win a smile from her. He fumbled clumsily at his pocket before he realized he had something in his hand. He looked at it dumbly. A playing card with a girl's picture on it. Red hair…

_Queen of Hearts. Kat. _He set the card on the table next to him and reached into his pocket. _Crazy. For a moment, she looked like a stranger._ _My girlfriend. I/S Effect. No. I/S Effect on steroids and adrenaline._ His hand trembled with effort as he drew a fistful of coins.

"So," she said, "what are you doing here? Waiting for someone?"

"You," he said without thinking. He held the money out to her with both hands. "Take what you want."

She gave a little laugh, the sound of monastery chimes in the breeze. He could listen to it all day. "A dollar sixty should do it. Will you get them for me?"

He turned to the machines. He missed the coin slot on the soft drink machine the first two tries because he couldn't take his eyes off her. When the plastic bottle thudded into the opening, he pulled it out and turned to the candy machine. This one was easier: its front was glass and he could watch her in its reflection.

"So, Dan. Really. What are you doing here?"

"Between classes," he mumbled as he punched the buttons. The wrong item dropped to the bin. He reached for more coins. "I'm new. Special Security."

"Oh." Her faint disappointment tore at his heart; he wished he could take back whatever he'd said to displease her. It was all his fault… "Got a girlfriend at work yet?"

"Girlfriend?" As if there was any other girl in the world for him but her.

"Never mind. Just be sure she's not Research. You know the rule, right?"

"Yes." The granola bar dropped into the bin, and he bent to retrieve it. "Kat."

"What?"

"Kat. My girlfriend. She's not in Research." _She __is__ research,_ he thought, feeling clever. "She-"

"Hey, Nicole." A man's voice, flat and neutral, from down the hallway. The girl's reflected image turned to look down the left-hand corridor.

With her attention off him, a measure of control over his lungs and limbs returned. He rose and turned to watch her directly. _I was ready to tell her about Kat. Tell her anything she asked, anything I thought she wanted to know. I've been afraid Kat's hoodoo could turn me into her love junkie. This woman can make me forget Kat exists._

"Hey, Mike," she said to the unseen visitor down the corridor. Dan felt a stab of jealousy chilling in its implications. "It's been awhile. Where have you been?"

"Training," the man replied, his voice echoing down the corridor. Dan realized the visitor was still some distance down the hall, and hadn't moved to join them. "Classes, weapons practice. A lot of PT."

"It shows." She put a hand on her hip and lifted a knee slightly. For the first time, Dan noticed what she was wearing: a peach-colored sheath that reached to a couple inches above her knees. It would have been modest if it hadn't been as form-fitting as Spandex. He could almost feel it in his hands, and the girl underneath as well. "Heard about the divorce. Sorry."

"Yeah, well."

"Now that you're a free man, maybe we could get together and do something." Her smile widened, and Dan's breathing shortened again.

"Flattered. Really. But I doubt I'd live through the night. Got it turned up kinda high, don't you?"

"Having trouble keeping it turned down, actually. Blood sugar's low." She flicked Dan a glance, and his buttocks flexed. "You're not making it easy, either. I just love buff blond-haired guys with big arms, and now I've got a pair of them almost close enough to touch. Dan? Diet Pepsi? Granola bar? Better just toss them from there."

He did, and though his aim was a bit off, she caught them easily. She kissed her fingertips and gave each man a little wave, and then she was gone the way she'd come.

His reason returned, and, with it, fear.

Heavy footsteps approached from the visitor's direction, and a sandy-haired man in IO uniform rounded the corner. He was a little older than Dan, and had a 'non-com' look about him, the look of a man used to taking care of officers and keeping them out of trouble. "Got your wits back yet?"

"Mostly." He sat, feeling shaky, the way he did after combat.

"Coffee?" The man moved towards the Bunn on the counter, with its carafe of God-knew-how-old brew.

"Yeah. Black's good." He drew a breath. "Ivery wasn't exaggerating one tiny bit, was he? My God."

"Buddy, she wasn't even trying. You're lucky she settled for the granola bar."

"What's she… I mean, have you ever..."

"No way. I know maybe a dozen guys who've been with her. But it's pointless to quiz em. They fumble around trying to explain for a minute, say stuff that makes no sense, and then they just trail off, staring into space for a minute with this creepy vacant smile on their faces. We don't ask anymore. I've also heard of men who walk into her rooms at night and roll out under a sheet in the morning, if you catch my drift. I wouldn't risk it. I take it she didn't ask you out yet."

"She sort of lost interest when I told her I was Special Security."

"Cuz you're both Research. Lucky. That rule doesn't really apply to her, but she respects it anyway. Most of the time." He brought the coffee to the table. "Still. I suggest you be unavailable after working hours for a few days. Off base would be best. She's got rooms here."

"I'm not allowed off base yet."

"Well, maybe we can do something about that." He offered a hand. "Mike Loud. Security. Bodyguard detail for Director Colby."

-0-

"Not how I expected to end the day." Daniel lifted his mug from the bar and took a careful sip. Mike Loud and another bodyguard, Brad Gerick, flanked him on adjacent stools. It was his second beer, and he'd been nursing it for an hour, intending to make it his last one of the night. He was grateful to be out of Central for the night for a number of reasons, and Mike and Brad were good company, but he wasn't about to get drunk and sloppy with two men who might carry his words back to Director Colby. "How'd you arrange it?"

"Told Monroe about this morning, and that Nicole might be looking for you tonight." Loud hoisted his beer and set it down. Dan noticed that the trip to the man's lips hadn't lowered the level of his drink much. "That probably would have been enough to get you off-campus for the night. But when I mentioned that Frank Colby had an eye on you... Well, the boss gets a lot of courtesy around SS."

_Boss? _Dan stared into his beer. "Thought you guys worked for Ruche."

"Slip of the lip," Loud said, not looking at him. "We used to be in Operations. Razors."

_Elite antiterrorist guys, babysitting a cripple? A cripple who runs one of the baddest paramilitaries on earth… and is targeted by the most dangerous adversaries imaginable. _"Ah. Well, that's smart. After what happened to him, the Shop wouldn't want to put second-stringers on his bodyguard detail. In case the Specials decide they're not finished with him."

Brad scoffed, sending the head of his beer over the mug's rim onto the bar. Mike gave him a dark look, and something passed between the two IO vets. Mike's attention returned to his glass. "'She', not 'they', kid. And the little bitch already made her point when she busted him up. Scragging him would spoil it. Besides, I don't think even the Twelve-fives are the kill-crazy psychos they're made out to be. Ask the guys who were at Westminster and Miramar and Chula Vista. But the little wolverines both acted _seriously_ pissed about something. And I'd bet it was the same something."

"Woman scorned." Brad hadn't been as careful about his consumption; Dan thought he might have a head in the morning. "What chick _wouldn'a _been ready to kill him?"

"Shut up, Brad," Mike said amiably. "She might have been ready, but she didn't, did she?" He slid off his stool. "Gotta see a man about a horse." He disappeared into the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

"Come on," Dan said to Brad. "You can't leave it at that."

Brad took a swig. "You know Colby was working the Gens under the radar for intel about the Twelve-fives."

"Right. And he got burned, and that's why they busted him up."

"To clear up a couple points. The Twelve-five on the assault team busted him up, over the redhead's objections. Got that from another guy on your team who was there. I think part of what she did was cuz… she was feeling protective of a sistah. Frank wasn't just meeting with Anne Devereaux to exchange info. They were dating."

Dan pushed his half-full mug away. "No."

"Well, just one date, but still. I was on his guard detail. He met her at a hotel restaurant in Boulder. Dinner, dancing, hand holding across the table, smiles and conversation. I started thinking they might check into a room. Then, like a bolt of lightning, she jumps up, and I thought she was gonna break his neck before we could reach him. But she changed again like flipping a light switch, gave him a parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow look, and just took off. Turns out Ivana had decided to pull the plug on Colby's op and sent an SS team to pick her up. She knew, somehow, before they got there. _That's_ how he got burned. And, Lord, did he pay."

"But... I thought she was with Lynch." _Except when she's with my father._

"Yeah, well, it looks to me like she's an easy mark for any guy with a nice smile and a line of BS. Stone killer, mind you, but she still wears her heart on her sleeve."

Mike returned to the bar and settled on his stool. "Think you had enough, Brad."

"Yup." Brad pushed his beer away as well. "Don't mind me, man. I have one too many, I start talkin stupid. Anything change in the Sandbox since I was there?"

Half an hour later, Dan excused himself and headed down the hall to the restrooms. A payphone was mounted on the wall just outside the men's. His need to empty his bladder forgotten, he arranged a call on his credit card and punched Kat's number.

"_Hello_?"

"Hey, babe."

"_Daniel? Where are you calling from?_"

"Easy, Kat. It's a payphone in Boulder. Did Adrienne give you my message?"

"_Yes. Thank You. Roxy's bouncing off the walls, but no one's stirring out of the house. I don't think we can see each other this weekend."_

"No way." He took a breath. "I miss you already."

"_Me too. Do you think they'll give up anytime soon?_"

"Doubt it. Frank Colby says the search won't even hit its stride for a while yet."

"_You're talking to Mr. Colby?_" Again, that tone of deference and concern that seemed to fit so ill with the way Kat _should_ feel about the man who'd pretended to be their friend. "_About us?_"

"He called me into his office for a little talk Sunday night. Kat, do you know anything about Annie and something that happened in Murrieta last April?"

Silence.

"Kat?"

"_Yes._" Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper. "_What do you need to know?_"

'_Need', not 'want.' Not a subject for idle curiosity._ "How did it happen?"

"_They knew Mr. Lynch from years back, when he was working for IO. He ruined them. A gun deal, I don't have the details. They stumbled on our location and kidnapped her, looking for payback. I don't know what they did to her, but I know it was horrible. She got free and killed them._"

"Bout what I thought."

"_Please don't think badly of her._"

"I feel like applauding. But it's the reason IO's looking for you there." _Not Felicita Park_, he thought with relief. "I ran into an old friend of yours today. Nicole Callahan."

He heard a little intake of breath. "_Are you okay? Did she talk to you? Did she…_"

"I'm fine, and I didn't give anything up. The talk was short and at a distance. I take it you know what she can do."

"_Yes. Was it bad?_"

"It could have been lots worse if I didn't have some practice dealing with beautiful girls who radiate psychic mating calls." He shifted the phone. "You know you do it too, don't you?"

"_Not like that. But yes_."

"You might have warned me. I wouldn't have felt like such a pervert around you. Well, not as often."

"_Sorry. I'm just self-conscious about it. It makes me feel like I'm not properly dressed, you know?_"

_It makes me imagine you naked and waiting for me._ "Yeah. It makes me uncomfortable too." He heard a voice murmuring in the room with her. "Is that Annie?"

"_Uh huh. She just finished the laundry, and she wants to talk to you. Would you mind, while I take a shower? You wouldn't believe what I smell like right now._"

He swallowed, picturing Kat rinsing her hair in the shower. "Sure. Don't know how long I can stay on the phone before I'm missed, though."

"_She missed that,_" Annie said. "_Just handed me the phone and bolted for the shower, pulling her clothes off on the way._"

He swallowed again. "That's okay, Annie. I kind of wanted to talk to you."

"_Dan, if it's about what happened in that house…_"

"No. Not unless you want to talk about it."

"_Maybe in ten thousand years._"

"Agreed. What I do want to ask you about is Frank Colby. I'm getting some strange vibes off the guy, and-"

Mike Loud appeared at Dan's elbow. Panicked, Dan tried to hang up the phone, only to find Brad's hand over the hook, preventing him from disconnecting. "Well," Brad said, not sounding drunk at all, "looks like things are moving a little faster than we planned."

Mike nodded. "Thought sure we'd have to bring you here a couple-three nights, at least. Share drinks and war stories, get you comfortable, drop some more hints we know more than we should, maybe get you nodding your head when we say stuff that's not in lockstep with the company song. I can't believe it was this easy."

He felt sick. _Setup. Colby, Nicole, all of it. Now they'll interrogate me, and I'll tell the bastards everything before they kill me. Not that they'll get much on the Gens, but my father will get scooped up for sure. At least Drew will have Adrienne-_

_No. Not after the way we trashed her in court. He'll become a ward of the State._

"That's Anne Devereaux on the phone, right?" Mike Loud wrapped his fingers around the receiver. "Give it to me." He pulled it gently from Dan's grip and placed it to his ear. "Anna? Sugar, why didn't you _tell_ us about him?" A pause. "Operational security my ass. Nicole almost had him for lunch today. Literally. If the boss hadn't sent me to look him up, she'd have everything he knows by now, if he lived to tell it." Another pause as Mike listened, his face softening. "Don't you worry about that. Or about him. We'll keep him out of trouble. Right now I'm worried about you. Are they looking in the right place this time? No, dammit, don't tell me. Just keep your heads down, for God's sake." He smiled into the phone. "It's good to hear your voice too. Brad's here, wants to talk to you." He extended his hand past Dan's nose to give the receiver to the other man. "Make it short. We gotta get back."

Mike gathered Dan by eye and led him away as Brad Gerick said, in a voice a man might use on a child, "Hey, little girl. That old man still treatin you okay?"

At their seats, Mike said, "Sit. You don't look too steady."

He carefully placed his rear on the stool, reached for his beer, and chugged it down. He set the empty mug on the bar. With some moisture in his mouth and throat again, he could speak. "Feel up to my eyebrows in adrenaline. Colby's still in contact with them? How?"

Mike shrugged. "Story's classified, but I was there. SS didn't storm into the restaurant because Ivana thought Colby's investigation was going nowhere. Ivana raided the restaurant because she thought Colby was a turncoat. He didn't volunteer to be bait at Chula Vista. It was part of her deal for his life, to prove which side he was on. And he did. After what Anna's sister did to him, he's back in Ivana's good graces, and not likely to fall back out."

"My God. He's a Resistance mole. The Director of Operations."

"You're not half as amazed as I am, boy, hearing you and the Queen of Hearts cooing over the phone. 'Beautiful girls with psychic mating calls.' That line _works? _Jesus."


	10. The Trap is Sprung

Friday September 29 2006

Escondido

Dan withdrew his housekey from his front-door lock and swung the door aside. "Kay, sport. Go grab some stuff-"

His son pushed past him and disappeared down the dark hallway, headed for his room.

"-and put it on the coffee table." Dan flicked on the switch by the door, glanced around the foyer, and entered the furnished but silent house. It almost seemed a stranger's, he'd spent so little time here; just a place he went on leave, where Adrienne and Drew were waiting. He'd washed the occasional dish in the kitchen, but he'd never fixed a leaky faucet or painted a wall or even cut the grass. He might have selected it, and the decree might say it was half his, but in his mind the house was Adrienne's.

She was everywhere he looked – maybe one reason he spent so little time here. He'd insisted that the house be furnished and run solely on his salary, in hopes Adrienne would see they didn't need a second income, and he was pretty sure she'd acceded. But she'd followed her tastes, not his, in dressing out the place. Not that there was anything wrong with that; he thought the place looked just fine, luxurious even. But she'd never once asked his opinion about a color or fabric or stick of furniture.

He studied a wide floral border that ran along one wall of the dining room near the ceiling, wondering how long it had been there, and how many times he'd glanced at it without really seeing it. Close examination showed it to be painted, not a paper appliqué, and very detailed. It was done in at least six colors, and some of the details had to have been done with a tiny brush. It had taken time and talent to apply. He wondered if Adrienne had hired it done or if it had been a favor from a friend.

_An exchange of favors_, a voice very like his father's whispered.

He shook it off. As uncomfortable as Adrienne's job and her attitude about it made him, he'd never had any hard evidence that she'd screwed around on him. At least not until after she'd told him she wanted out of the marriage, and did that really count? He knew part of his perpetual disquiet about her had come from the ease with which she'd agreed to a date the night they'd met in the club. One of the Service buddies he was bar-crawling with had recognized her from her centerfold, and Dan had come on to her for the challenge and the bragging points. He'd bought her a drink to get her to sit with him on her break, something he never did with performers as a point of pride, preferring to charm them to his side. He'd worked hard on her for fifteen minutes, but hadn't gotten more than polite interest and maybe a little throwaway flirting. He'd finally told himself he couldn't expect any more from a professional female, especially one so sought-after, who'd doubtless heard every pickup line ever conceived. But, as she'd finished her drink and was about to go back on stage, he'd impulsively asked her out, sure she'd make some excuse – and she'd smiled and accepted.

The second date had been in his apartment, the last half of it in his bed.

He could have paid for his beer every night for a year telling the story, but he couldn't do it. It was all his. The sex had been great, but her voice and her smile and the touch of her fingers in his palm and the smell of her hair when she shook it out as she got in her car were the memories that kept coming back. He found himself thinking about her all the time, so much that thoughts of any other conquests, past or prospective, were crowded out of his mind. But he'd almost been afraid to call her again, especially as the days between stretched out. Finally, after a week of indecision, he'd gathered his courage and punched her number, not knowing whether to expect anger or a brush-off.

Instead, she'd sounded pleased and a little surprised to hear from him, acting as if the week between hadn't existed for her. They'd made a third date, and a fourth, and after a while, he realized he hadn't dated another girl since he'd met her. He presented her with a ring a month after he'd bought her that ice tea. They were married the day before he shipped out to Iraq.

_Well, as the saying goes, we always marry strangers._ Dan noticed the blinking light on the answering machine in the living room, and decided to clear it out.

Quite a few were hang-ups, probably automated dialers that had disconnected when they found no one at the other end to solicit. A couple were from his father. The rest were from Adrienne.

His ex's messages weren't demands for a return call. He'd called her every night during his stay at Central and chatted as she drove home. The machine had logged all her calls between eleven AM and noon, her usual waking time, as if she'd gotten up thinking of him. The first was on Monday morning, thanking him for Sunday and reminding him to set up another date. The rest were like a collection of audible Post-it notes: gushing over Drew and expressing her pleasure at seeing him again. Remarks about Caitlin, from her looks and personality quirks to her car and her clothes, all positive and affectionate, and endless admonitions to take things slow with her. A recommendation for a men's shop, now that he was "out of uniform". A bunch of other stuff, minutia that a married woman might fill her husband's ear with when they were together. He let it wash over him, just soaking up her voice and tone. It had been a long time since Adrienne had been relaxed and chatty with him; even months before the separation, most of their conversations had been conducted as if across a negotiating table. _Maybe the divorce was the right thing for both of us after all._

That reminded him that she'd said the papers would be ready for signature last week. But she hadn't mentioned them, either at night or on the machine. He briefly considered asking her about them, then decided to let her bring the subject up; after all, the divorce had been her idea.

There were no messages from Kat. It occurred that he'd never given her his home number. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket: as usual, he'd forgotten to turn it on when he'd removed it from the charger. It was strange, he thought, as he watched it searching for the nearest tower, that he couldn't establish such a simple habit. A lapse of this kind might have endangered his life during a tour; he'd always checked and rechecked his gear throughout the day there.

There were no messages from her on his cell phone either. It occurred to him that he'd never set up his voicemail. And, of course, the call log had no record of her number. He thought about calling, then decided Drew had been quiet for too long.

He found Drew on the floor of his room, surrounded by toys. His demand that they live within his income certainly hadn't been followed here; the room was a treasure house of kid stuff. But he'd never called her on it. If he'd learned one thing as an officer, it was to avoid unnecessary orders that were sure to be disobeyed; and if he was obliged to issue them anyway, not to press his people unnecessarily on their adherence. "Drew. Got your stuff picked out yet?"

"No. We going?" The boy's reluctance gave him pause_. The little room in Dad's house must seem like a jail cell compared to this._

"Not yet." He noticed more fancy painted borders on the walls at ceiling and waist height, realistic dinosaur panoramas stretching across the wall with no repeat. He pointed at the artwork with his chin. "Who did the borders?"

Drew appeared to study them. "Mom. She was doing it all the time for a while. The dining room too." He smiled. "She let me help on the bottom. The red one's a brachiosaur, and the blue one's a T. Rex, and the green ones are velociraptors. I don't remember the other ones, but they're cool."

Dan followed the boy's fingers, thinking of Drew and Adrienne together turning the project into a little party, of her up and down on the ladder for days with dinky brushes and baby-food jars of paint. _I had no idea she could do this. What a waste of talent._

The phone rang in the living room. He reached it just as the answering machine began its greeting message. "Hello?"

"_Danny. I was just going to do a message._"

"Well, now you can talk to me in person," he said, feeling strangely self-conscious, like a teenager calling the new girl in class.

"_Are you staying there now?_"

"Not really. I'm just here to look in on things and grab some stuff to take to my dad's. And check my messages," he added.

"_I can't imagine what I must sound like on those. I know you're not there. It's just that lately you're the last person I talk to before I go to sleep, and I get up thinking about what we said the night before, and something comes to mind that I don't want to forget to say before I talk to you again._"

"I don't mind." He looked all around the empty rooms, then up at the dining-room border. "It's… nice. Nice to be getting along, you know?"

"_Yes._" An uncomfortable pause. "_Is Drew with you?_"

"Yeah." He watched his son enter the living room, arms laden with books and toys. "Want to talk to him?"

"_You have to ask?_"

As Drew deposited his burden on the coffee table, Dan said, "Your mom's on the phone. Want-"

The boy grabbed at the phone. "Mom?" A pause. "Fine. When are you comin over?" Dan noticed his son held the phone with two hands, at mouth and ear. "Okay. I learned how to play Twister. Annie beats everybody, but I beat Grampa." He listened, then giggled, his face lighting like a halogen bulb. _He never smiles like that for anyone else,_ Dan thought with a faint mix of guilt and jealousy. _Not even Annie._

It didn't look like Drew would be ready to pass the phone back any time soon, so Dan wandered through the house, looking for items to take to his father's place and reflecting just how deep a man could get into it in less than three weeks.

He'd spent the last three nights in the little bar in Boulder, a regular hangout for Colby's 'first team'. Mike had introduced Dan to at least two members a night. Every man on the team appeared to be part of Colby's conspiracy. How active they were remained a mystery, but it was plain they were sympathizers and keeping 'the boss's' secrets, at least, and, by extension, Dan's. Dan suspected he was in it deeper than they, having already withheld knowledge of the Gens' whereabouts, warned them of impending IO plans, and even having diverted Jared's suspicion from the little pole dancer in San Diego who looked _just_ like Roxanne Spaulding. But Dan suspected these men were prepared to go much farther than they had.

They'd insisted he call Annie every night from the bar, and taken turns accompanying him to the pay phone, turning their heads away as he'd punched the number in. They'd spent a few minutes exchanging happy words with Annie, obviously smitten with her, and turned the phone over to him. He'd conversed with Kat most of the night, talking about a million things. As he did, he'd looked down the hallway to the bar, noting the looks of good-natured envy that passed among the senior men. Then they'd piled into someone's car for the trip back into Central. He'd stayed up to call Adrienne every night on her trip home, never missing the lost sleep till morning.

His classmates had been full of questions, of course. None of them were allowed off base yet. The senior men in their own team were friendly, but they weren't really mixing socially with the rookies, especially after hours. And Security and SS generally didn't rub elbows anyway. But even guys as new as his classmates could spot the qualitative difference between typical 'Gerry's Kids' and the Ops Director's watchdogs. Cummins, who knew Loud, had dropped a word in the others' ears, and Dan's need to evade uncomfortable questions during school hours about his new buddies and special privileges had come to an abrupt stop.

The looks and comments out of earshot, however, had redoubled. From "idle" remarks intended as conversation starters, Dan guessed that Jared had gossiped about Adrienne. Coupled with Cummins' secondhand story about Nicole Callahan's interest, he'd picked up an unwanted reputation as a ladies' man, predictably making him the subject of gossip and speculation among his comrades and Central's meager female population as well. A few had crossed his path in the hallways and the cafeteria and struck up conversations. Their tone, however, had made him think they were just curious, for which he was grateful. Or maybe they were just careful about challenging Nicole Callahan's prerogatives. But, of course, being seen with them just added more fuel to the fire. It was amazing, really, how much bullshit could fly from one end of a place like this to the other in just a couple days.

_It's almost humorous_, he thought. _I haven't even gotten my tongue in my girlfriend's mouth, my ex is giving me dating advice, and the only woman at work who seems genuinely interested in sharing sheets scares me so much I'm avoiding her. I'm a player, all right._

He cleaned the perishables out of the fridge and cupboards and bagged them, grabbed the last of his modest civilian wardrobe, and began loading the car. Drew was lounging on the couch, still deep in conversation with his mother. When he came back in, the boy looked up. "Dad. Mom wants to talk to you."

Dan took the phone. "Hi."

"_Danny, what's this Drew's telling me about you and Kat? You're not seeing each other this weekend? You're not fighting for real, are you?_"

His son was watching him attentively. Dan shifted the phone. "No. I'm going to Pendleton Saturday with some guys from work."

"_Somehow I don't think that's the whole story._"

He shifted the phone again, picked up some of Drew's things off the coffee table, and walked out the front door, hoping the boy wouldn't follow. "We just agreed to take a breather for a while, is all."

"_And how long is 'a while'?_"

_Until IO loses interest in this neighborhood and it's safe for her to stick her head up out of her bunker, or until she's caught. _"Hard to say. We're still talking on the phone, Ren."

"_So are we. You and me, I mean. And me and her. Sometimes she sounds so sad, Danny. It never lasts, but…_"

_Change the subject, right now. _"Um, Sunday okay again?"

"_Count on it. How about a pizza joint? You know, one of those kid places with arcade games and employees in dog suits?_"

He smiled into the phone. "Sounds great." It occurred that she was calling on a Friday evening, and there were no background noises on her end. Another thought occurred. "I don't suppose you've got the night off."

A pause. "_In fact, I do. One Friday a month, and this is it._"

"You've got plans with Alan, I suppose."

"_Actually…_" another pause. "_I think I'd rather talk about that in person. Tonight, or did I misunderstand?_"

"No, you didn't. Usually Drew has Friday nights in with my dad and Annie, but she's not coming around lately either."

"_I see._" And Dan was sure she did, or at least that her suspicions were on track. "_Where do you want to meet?_"

"I hear Poway has some nice restaurants," Dan said, naming a resort town about halfway between his house and hers.

"_It does. How about The Islander's, on Carmel Road?_"

He got directions and agreed on a time and hung up. Then he called Kat as he was loading the last of the loot into the car.

"_Daniel. When did you get in?_"

"Couple hours ago," he said, feeling vaguely guilty. It was the first time since Tuesday he hadn't called her by eight o'clock. "I've been busy."

"_I understand. You've got family stuff to do, now you're home. How's Drew?_"

"Missing you guys." He hesitated. _We have too many secrets between us already. Don't add to them. _"I'm taking him to see Adrienne. Late supper."

"_That's great._" Not a false note in her tone. _Well, why should there be? They're friends. And she trusts me. Why am I feeling like I'm doing something slightly shady?_

An old song drifted into his mind, Bob Seger maybe. _"…if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with…"_

She was still speaking. "_So, what else are you doing this weekend?_"

"Saturday, I'm leaving Drew with Dad and going off somewhere with a bunch of Director Colby's boys." He leaned against the old sedan's fender. "I think they're going to induct me with a blood ritual and teach me the secret handshake."

She giggled. "_Get you drunk and tattooed, more likely. I've never met them, but Anna thinks they're sweet. She calls them 'the boys' .You should see her when she talks to them on the phone._"

He smiled into the receiver, looking up into the hazy, light-polluted night sky. "And you should see it from this end. Unbelievable. The way she wraps them, you'd think it was… what do you call it? Allure?"

"_Yes,_" she said cautiously.

"I know she's different, Kat. She told me about… the experiments. Said it was all engineering. I can't imagine what they did to her." _And I can't believe they left her with all her marbles, even as level-headed as she always seems. At least when my father's not around…_ "Hard to believe a little selective breeding and some drugs can create people who can defy the laws of physics."

"_There is no such thing._" Suddenly, his six-years-younger girlfriend sounded like a schoolmarm. "_Gen just proves we don't know as much as we think._"

"Come on, now. Throwing cars? Gravity fields? Lightning from nowhere? I mean, what happened to 'equal and opposite reactions'?"

"_Daniel,_" she said slowly, "_How much physics did you learn in school?_"

_Uh-oh._ "I advance-enlisted out of high school. My college courses emphasized language skills. The science classes were all applied subjects. You know, electronics and statics. Practical stuff."

"'_Practical'. You mentioned electronics. Did you learn mathematics that involved the roots of negative numbers?_"

"Um, think so," he said uncomfortably. "Didn't ever use it."

"_You'd have to if you were designing circuits. 'Imaginary number' math was an intellectual exercise when it was invented hundreds of years ago. But it's essential to modern technology. So you didn't learn anything about quantum mechanics, or string theory?_"

"No," he said, feeling like a kid who hadn't done his homework getting treated like a moron by the prettiest teacher in school.

"_Then just take my word for it, Daniel. The accepted laws of high-order physics make no intuitive sense. Identical experiments sometimes yield very different results, objects at opposite ends of the universe experience identical or mirror-image effects simultaneously, and sometimes cause can precede effect. Einstein said that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we __can__ imagine. All that the discovery of Gen means is that our present theories will have to be revised or expanded to accommodate our observations. It's not as impossible as it sounds. You were talking about keeping a balance before. For all I know, when I throw a car, the rotation of the Earth slows down by a millisecond a century. Or maybe, in a galaxy so distant its light won't reach us before the Sun burns out, a star is going nova a picosecond later or earlier than it would have. What Gens do is phenomenal in human terms, but on a universal scale, it may be next to nothing._"

_So would the Sun winking out_, he thought, remembering Ivery's lecture.

Poway California

"You _moved out?_" Daniel glanced around and leaned across the table, lowering his voice. "Why?"

Adrienne shrugged. "Nothing he did. Really. But I'm spending a lot of time getting my club up and running. I'm starting to spend nights away from Alan's house. And I'll need to move once I open my doors anyway. It just seemed pointless to drag it out."

Dan glanced at a nearby table, where Drew was sitting alone, staring raptly up at a TV tuned to a kiddie show. "I don't think that's all there is to it."

"No, I suppose not." Adrienne took a sip of her cocktail, the only one she'd ordered. "He was just what I needed when I left you, Danny. He's kind, considerate, undemanding, and patient. I can't imagine him losing his temper with me. I've known him since before I met you. I'm sure it won't affect our business relationship, and we'll still be friends." She rested her chin on her fist. "And maybe that's part of the problem. Sometimes living with him felt like… being a live-in friend-with-benefits. No emotional investment. He made time for me the same way he scheduled appointments with his clients. He's a good man. But we were never going to love each other."

_And why_, he asked himself, _does that leave me feeling... complimented?_

Saturday September 30 2006

Escondido

Sarah was in her room, dressing after her shower. She hadn't wanted to put the oversized sweats she'd worn from bedroom to bathroom back on, sure they were perfumed with Bobby's pheromones, and so had traveled the hall in a damp towel. She had just unwrapped and was about to let the towel fall to the floor when her door clicked open.

She snatched the towel back up and covered her front as she spun to face the door, possibilities flicking through her mind. _Not Bobby. He'd never come in without knocking. Anna either._

Roxanne came in and swung the door shut behind her as she glided to the sitting- room couch. She plopped down, disappearing behind the divider half-wall. "We need to talk, Sis," she said, giving the last word a little extra emphasis.

"I'm dressing right now, Roxanne."

"That seems like a lousy excuse for avoiding a conversation. Funny. I go in Kat's room all the time, and she doesn't think a thing about changing her undies in front of me. Even now that we both know we're not blood. Girl needs a serious lingerie upgrade too, by the way. You've shown your butt to every guy in this house, so what's the problem?"

Sarah considered. She'd always shared a bedroom with her sister until she'd come to Darwin; modesty with Beth had been excess baggage. "Well, come in here then. I feel like I'm talking to a wall." She dropped the towel on the floor and stepped to an armoire. She opened it just in time to look in the mirror on the door and see Roxanne flop down on the big bed. "I'm not usually body-conscious. I thought you might be uncomfortable, considering."

"Considering you're gay, you mean." The girl propped her elbows on the bed and put her chin in her palms, crossing her ankles a foot over her butt.

Sarah selected panties and stepped into them. "Do I need to ask what you want to talk about?"

"Nope. How long have you known?"

Bra next. She picked something modest that she seldom wore, since she wasn't going to leave the house. "That I was Stephen Callahan's daughter, or that you were too?" She adjusted the neck strap and reached behind her for the back straps.

"Either. Both."

Sarah fumbled with the unfamiliar clasp in the middle of her back, her arms bent almost double behind her. _Knew there was a reason I never wear this thing. Designed by a man, I'll bet. _"Both, the day Anna came home from Phoenix with Mr. Lynch. She told me. We told Kat just before Chula Vista."

"So you all kept it from me for five frickin months. Why?"

The damnable clasp kept slipping out of her grip just as she was about to hook it. Her fingers kept getting in the way. "Unh. No excuse, really. I told Caitlin and Anna it was my job. Just didn't think you'd take it well. You two are so close."

Roxanne slid off the bed. "Let go. Let me do it." She swiftly hooked the ends together, and Sarah exhaled in relief. Then the girl wound her arms around Sarah's waist. "You're such a doof sometimes."

Sarah froze. "Somebody walks in, they might get the wrong idea." But her hand found its own way to the tiny ones clasped over her navel and covered them.

"Screw em." The younger girl laid her cheek against Sarah's shoulder blade. "I liked Kat as soon as I met her. We were BFFs before we ever compared birth certificates. I kept thinking that finding out we were sisters should have changed the way I felt about her somehow, but it didn't. I thought it was just because we never knew each other growing up, you know? But… she just never fit the picture that comes to mind when I imagine an older sister. It's all too warm and friendly and polite." Roxanne's grip tightened for a moment. "You and me, we shop and gossip and talk about everything. Argue about everything, too. I borrow your jewelry without asking and you use up my shampoo. When you get bossy with me, it's different from when Kat's hovering over me. Sometimes you make me so mad I want to take a ball bat to you, but if I stop talking to you, it hurts all the time until we make up."

Sarah nodded. "That's how it is with my sisters. My other sisters."

"Your mom ever mention him?"

"No. No way."

"Mine either. But she would have if she'd known, I think." The arms around Sarah's waist tightened again. "Just realized. All the attention Matt gave you. He knew, didn't he? But he never treated me like that."

"He didn't know about you. IO didn't either. They took that name on your birth certificate at face value and never ran a DNA test."

"Well, that explains the guilt."

"Guilt?"

"Yeah. The dirty feeling I got whenever I thought about laying hands on him. Not that it stopped me." She shifted slightly. "They didn't check. Doesn't that seem strange? They were so by-the-numbers about that stuff."

Sarah had a suspicion about that, but she hesitated to throw it out between them with no way to prove it one way or another. "It would be an easy assumption to make if Caitlin's father had a certain reputation. His name was on the birth certificate, after all."

"Well, sure, but still."

Sarah took a breath and made a decision. "Or… if Roxanne Spaulding wasn't Alex Fairchild's first illegitimate."

"Unless you've got a name to go with that idea, stop right there. This family gets any bigger, we're gonna need our own directory." Roxanne's hands slid off her, and a moment later she felt a sharp slap on her right glute. "Better put some miles on the treadmill, girlfriend. You're spreading out."

Sarah picked out a tank and smiled at Roxanne's reflection as the girl returned to the bed. "Fat chance. Pun intended. A little exercise wouldn't be a bad idea, though, what with the forced seclusion and all."

"You'd think Bobby'd be giving you plenty of exercise by now." Roxanne's reflection grinned at her a moment before settling into graver lines when Sarah didn't respond. "Not, still?"

Sarah shut the armoire and opened another. "Not." She opened a drawer and picked out a pair of cutoffs; the house was plenty warm, especially upstairs. "But we're still sleeping together. _Just_ sleeping."

"I don't know how you do it, honestly. It'd break my heart every night."

"It did mine, too, for a while. It's just amazing what you can get used to. Maybe someday."

"What about Bobby? He knows, right? I mean, he's _got _to. Doesn't it drive him insane?"

"I didn't tell him till last week. Up till then, he just thought he was sharing his bed with a crazy lesbian." She slipped on a pair of footie socks. No other footwear was necessary; in Anna's house, they'd stay clean forever. "And Bobby's grip on reality is iron."

Roxanne crossed her ankles in the air again. "Do you suppose they were _all_ horn dawgs? The Twelves, I mean. Guys are what they are. They find out they've got built-in girl catnip, they'll bang anything tasty that comes their way, don't you think?"

Sarah briefly considered voicing her suspicions about Luis Scajola's parentage, then decided against. She wasn't sure Roxanne would be able to keep them to herself, and Sarah couldn't see any good coming from spreading them around. Bobby's relationship with his father was fragile enough; the abandonment issue was healed over, she thought, but the scar was deep. Learning that John Lynch had sired a child out of wedlock who'd grown up not knowing his biological father might be enough to open it again. And, Daniel's presence in her emotional picture notwithstanding, everyone knew how stuck Caitlin was on the boy. Sarah's redheaded sistah was just getting over her fruitless double crush on Bobby and his dad; there was just no telling what it might do to her to learn she'd gone hopeless over yet another Lynch male. "I don't know. But if they were, they averaged more careful than Alex Fairchild and Stephen Callahan. There were about sixty Twelves, and they've sired ninety-odd kids since they turned Gen. That puts our father and Caitlin's a little ahead of the curve." _Unless there are more like Luis that IO never found._

The top row of drawers on the armoire was very small. Sarah opened one and withdrew an item she'd noticed but hadn't yet worn: a peridot pendant strung from a slender silver chain. She studied the sparkling yellow-green stone and wondered once more whether it was the one Roxanne had given her for her seventeenth birthday. Had Anna smuggled it from the beach house before its destruction, or duplicated it for her _shikasin_ to ease the shock of the team's narrow escape? It was a token of love, either way. She slipped it around her neck, and the stone hung cool against her skin for just a moment before it warmed. "I wonder what he looked like sometimes. How they met. If my father knows. My next sister was conceived less than three months after I was born. Seems like Mother was eager to prove something to her husband."

Roxanne flowed off the bed and took Sarah's hand, tugging her away from the armoire and its mirror, forcing her to look at the girl directly for the first time since the little pixie had entered the sleeping area. "Come with me."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see." Roxanne led her towards the bedroom door and the hallway. "Keep it down, okay? We don't wanna get caught."

Wednesday October 4 2006

"She's late. Are you sure about this?"

"She's not late, Ferris." Jeffrey shifted in the parked car's passenger seat. The vehicle was in a slot near the center of the little shopping mall's lot, surrounded by employee vehicles. He scanned the storefronts with a pair of sport glasses. "There's a thirty-minute window. And you know we can't be sure. But she's been coming every other day for a week, and she wasn't here yesterday."

"Where'd the lead come from? One of the storekeepers, you said?"

"Yeah. He thought she was a hooker working the neighborhood and called the cops. The complaint included a real detailed description." He offered her another pair.

"Oho." She took the glasses from his hand, careful not to let her fingers linger on his overlong, and looked at the two entrances to the lot. "The longer he stared at her, the more outraged he got, huh?"

"Something like that." Once their eyes were set firmly to their binoculars, he said, "How was your ski weekend?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"No."

Her inspection moved from the entrances to the rest of the team. Two Suburbans packed with men were parked near each entrance, ready to seal them off. An ambulance idled near the back of the lot with its lights off, and a tilt-bed car-hauling truck sat next to it. "Never touched a ski. I went with my sister, who got hammered all three nights and basically acted like a college kid on spring break. She just got divorced, and she's trying to prove something, I guess." She ducked her head to get a look at the strip's roof, but the sharpshooters were too well concealed to spot. "I listened to her maunder on about her ex and evaded a dozen questions about my job. We spent most of the time shopping or in the lodge. And flirted with every man at the bar who gave us a smile."

"That last must have kept you busy."

Agents surrounded the lot, but none were nearby, and they were alone in the car. She dropped her right hand to her lap, holding the glasses to her eyes with just the left. Without moving her shoulder or upper arm, she placed her free hand on his thigh. He didn't move, but said quietly, "Don't."

She returned her hand to her lap before raising it back to the glasses. "Sorry."

"Me too. But if we're going to keep working together…"

"_Charlie to Alpha. Inbound, east entrance._"

A blue Mini two-door wheeled into the lot. Ferris saw two faces behind the windshield as the little car traveled halfway down the lane that fronted the retail strip. It pulled into a slot across from a convenience store and parked. The passenger door opened.

"Bingo," Jeffrey said.

"I see why he mistook her for a hooker." Through the field glasses, Ferris examined the Queen of Clubs' leather mini and embroidered hose. The girl's black leather jacket was open at the front, showing a pink camisole underneath. She tucked a strand of purple hair behind an ear adorned with three earrings and swung the door shut.

"In the file, there's a picture of her greeting the Dean when she arrived at Darwin, dressed just like that. At fourteen."

"Hmp." Ferris watched the girl strut across the lane to the sidewalk. She was wearing ankle boots with what looked like four-inch heels. "It's a wonder she didn't get knocked up before she was recruited. She's really just going in for cigarettes?"

"One pack. Sometimes she buys a couple of sodas or something, too, but she's here for the smokes."

"Why the hell doesn't she just buy a carton once a month or so?"

"Maybe she's trying to quit."

"Is that Rainmaker in the driver's seat?"

"Looks like. Trail, or take em here?"

"Take them here," she said firmly. "Then follow their back trail to the nest."

"Okay. I'll start a camera backtrack, for starts." Jeff sent a text on his PDA, fingers deftly manipulating the keys. Ferris pulled her attention from his hands and focused on the storefront that Spaulding had entered.

A few minutes later, the girl came out, purchases in hand. As she was about to step off the sidewalk, she paused and scanned the lot, taking in all the unusual vehicles.

"Uh oh." Ferris keyed the general frequency. "Look sharp. Queen of Clubs seems suspicious."

Their quarry stepped quickly across the lane to the waiting car. It idled for a moment more, then shifted into gear and began moving, but not towards the driveway it had entered. It cruised along the storefronts, apparently heading towards the north entrance instead.

"Another errand," Jeffrey said, "or leading us off?"

"Doesn't matter. Phone jammers?"

"On since they pulled in the lot."

The Mini swung between two rows of cars, pointed towards the north entrance. "Do it."

"Coming your way, Fox," Jeffrey called into his wrist mike. "Don't let them out of the lot."

"_Roger, firing_," the team's sniper replied, and Ferris heard a _chuff _and saw the rear passenger window shatter. The car lunged forward at an angle and crunched into the trunk of a parked car. She saw the airbags go off, pinning the Specials to their seats. The little engine howled - the accelerator stuck, apparently, or maybe a spasm in the driver's foot – and the tires screamed as the Mini tried to push its way through the obstacle.

Team members from all over the lot sprang into action. The Suburbans at the entrances rolled across and blocked them while other agents sprinted to the car. Still others moved to the sidewalk to reassure witnesses - and get their names. As she rushed up to the car, Ferris could see the Specials behind the deflated remains of their airbags. They behaved as if they were underwater in the dark, unsure of the direction of the surface and running out of air. The little purple-haired girl turned to the passenger window with blind eyes and smashed her face into the glass, smearing it with blood.

One of Ferris's men reached through the shattered rear window with a Lethe dispenser, but then paused, seeming uncertain. Ferris knew what his problem was: the neural grenade in the car was messing up his grip on reality. "Burton!" She said. "Tap her and get out of there!"

He shook himself and carefully pressed the injector to the girl's neck, and she slumped as if she'd been switched off.

A second agent smashed the rear driver's-side window and did the same to the Indian girl. Then he reached over her sagging shoulder, pushed aside the airbag, and switched off the engine. The scene fell almost silent.

The agent reached around the driver, tangling his hand in her long black hair, fumbling for the inside latch. He finally found it and the doors unlocked with a pop. "Queen of Spades, Queen of Clubs. Two down, five to go."

The man on the other side opened his door and caught the little brunette as she spilled out, her lower face bloody and dripping, nose askew. "Shit. Not everything's going our way." He pulled her from the car and laid her gently on the ground.

Ferris reached a finger into the man's shirt collar and touched the band of cool metal inside. The finger tingled. "Burton, get your C-collar checked out when we get back."

The ambulance rolled up without lights or siren from its parking spot on the other side of the lot. The two 'paramedics' who got out and opened the rear doors to assemble their equipment were agents with med training, one of them an honest-to-God PhD. "Collar them," she said to them, "first thing. Before you move them."

A few people appeared at store windows, and a couple stepped out. A stare from the agents dressed in their Secret Service costumes sent them back inside. A police car bumped over the curb and rolled into the lot, lights flashing, as the Specials were being loaded onto the gurneys and wheeled to the ambulance. Another followed close behind.

"Guess they didn't get the memo." Ferris turned toward Jeffrey, but he was already walking toward the cruisers, reaching for whatever ID he intended to show them. Two agents followed close behind. She returned her attention to the car. "Anything?"

"Rental papers in the glove box. Ballpoints and change, stuff like that." The agent picked up the neural grenade and it immediately slipped from his deadened fingers. "Still live. Shoulda known better." He produced a pair of ratcheting pliers and a special tool from his pocket, picked up the grenade again with the pliers, inserted the tool in one end, and gave a twist. "Safe." He took the grenade in hand and stuffed it in a pocket. "Papers say the car was picked up eight days ago in Temecula." He flipped the key on to read the odometer, then glanced at the rental papers again. "Sixteen hundred miles? Shit, they must have been driving all over So Cal."

"Get the black box and transponder." Many rental agencies installed electronic 'babysitters' on their cars, devices which would record abusive driving such as hard cornering and braking as well as jackrabbit takeoffs. And, of course, a GPS unit to record its travels. Combined with the camera backtrack, they should soon have location of the safe house, as well as the whereabouts of any other of their quarry the girls had dropped off on the way to the store. "Might as well check the address on the IDs and rental papers, just to be thorough."

A 'paramedic' approached her with two large plastic toolboxes. "All in here, everything but their fillings. No weapons, no trackers, no bugs. The tall one has an IUD, though. We left that alone."

"Really." She frowned. "Get it out. Quick. And check the other one again, head to toe and every opening."

The man looked at her strangely, but she cut him off before he could speak. "Sarah Rainmaker is a lesbian."

He got it, nodded, and left. Jeffrey returned, pocketing his ID, as the cruisers shut off their lights, turned, and exited the lot. "They got the memo. Somehow they thought 'all local law enforcement' didn't mean them. A call to their shift commander took care of it."

"Get this car's movements traced. Like, yesterday. I want an address for the others before they know these two are out of play."


	11. The Only Reasonable Explanation

Boulder  
October 4 2006

"_We're ready._" Ferris Mars's voice came from all around the conference room via the excellent sound system. The billboard screen remained blank. The Lynch Mob's safe house had been located just a few miles away, less than an hour after the takedown in the parking lot. Ivana had agreed with Mars and Monroe that camera equipment wasn't worth waiting for, and had ordered the operation to proceed with all possible speed. "_We have movement behind the windows. Seems casual._"

"Seems." Ivana drummed her fingertips on the conference table's polished black surface. A dozen top staffers from all three Directorates shared it with her. Colby looked along its length, and saw every man present turned toward the head of the table, trying to gauge the Chief Director's mood. She was wearing her trademark Mona Lisa smile, which could be good or bad. "Do you know who's in there?"

"_We saw the Jack of Spades drive up, and the Jack of Clubs step outside to greet him. Otherwise no._"

The drumming stopped. "No sign of the Ace of Spades, or the red Queens?"

"_Negative. Wait for them?_" Ferris's tone of voice was carefully neutral.

Ivana drummed again, briefly. "No. Proceed."

A moment later, all present heard a rapid series of chuffing reports from grenade launchers, half a dozen at least. Then huffing sounds, presumably as Agent Mars raced across the street. A thumping, crunching noise Colby recognized as an entrance door going down.

"_Clear,_" a man near Ferris called out. The word was repeated faintly as individual rooms were secured.

"_Lower floor secure,_" Ferris said into her mike. "_Jack of Spades is down and doped._" That would be Lynch's son, Colby thought, feeling a steel band tighten around his chest.

"_Running!_" A man shouted.

"_Jack of Clubs is out of the house,_" Ferris reported with apparent unconcern. "_Second story window._"

Ivana raised her eyebrows. "Problem?"

"_No, ma'am._" A moment later, she said, "_Got him._" A murmur of voices. "_House is secure, just the two. Director Colby was right. Come at them with a plan and surprise, it's like clubbing baby seals._"

Every person at the table looked his way. He kept his jaw loose and relaxed the muscles around his eyes. He even managed to lean back in the wheelchair and smile faintly, all the while sick with dismay.

The Director raised her voice to address the field team. "Stake it out, in case any others show up."

"_Yes, ma'am. Doing it now._" They could hear, faintly, the beeping of a truck's backup alarm. "_Cleanup crew just arrived with a new door and window glass. In fifteen minutes, it'll look like we were never here, at least until someone steps inside. Rigging neutralizer fields throughout the house._"

Ivana nodded. "Good work, Agent Mars. Congratulations to you and your team."

"_Thank you, ma'am. But we're just getting started. Please tell Director Colby, on behalf of the team, we wish the Twelve-five was already in the bag, but we'll get her._"

"And the one from Chula Vista," Cher said softly behind him. "You and her, you'll meet again."

He gave a soft sigh that he was sure would be mistaken._ If we ever meet in private, I'll kiss the hands that did this to me._

Ivana twitched an eyebrow. "Well, Frank. I'd say their little plan to use you to demoralize the troops backfired. You seem to have become a _raison de guerre _instead."

"_Almost cleared out,_" Ferris said. "_Processing the subjects now. We'll ship all personal effects… what the HELL?_"

Thursday October 5 2006  
Los Angeles

Jeffrey Adams and Curtis Monroe stood in the darkened observation room, looking through the one-way glass at the girl with the purple-frosted hair. She sat on a folding chair at a steel table, the only items of furniture in the bare steel-walled room. Her collar had been removed, and she was dressed in a blue coverall several sizes too large for her: the cuffs were turned back to keep them off her knuckles and her bare feet. It was her only clothing. Her nose was taped to her cheeks, and her eye sockets were darkening; she was going to look like a raccoon tomorrow, Jeff thought. They watched her try to tuck a strand of purple hair behind her ear with trembling fingers, only to have it immediately fall back on her cheek. Then she reached unsteadily with both hands for the paper cup on the table, shaking so badly that coffee slopped over the rim of the half-full container on its way to her lips. Aftereffects of the collar, Jeff supposed, and the Lethe and other drugs working their way through her system. The all-night interrogation must have been scary as hell, too.

"You say DNA tests prove it?" Monroe leaned forward, almost touching the glass and risking letting the girl see him. "No possible mistake?"

"They ran it three times." Jeff stared through the window at the little pixie, who now sat with her face in her hands as if about to cry. "This girl is Leni Mueller, age twenty-three, from Augsburg, Germany. Physical trainer, dance instructor, and part-time model.

"From March two thousand four to last April, she did occasional work for this weird performance-art group that jetted her all over the world, sometimes alone, sometimes with several others – the ones we have in custody. Sixteen gigs in all. She'd be provided with a wardrobe and a set of instructions. She already knew to start the gig by bobbing her hair, and adding pink or purple frosting when she arrived. Then, for a couple days or a week, she'd follow a detailed itinerary - visiting certain places, making purchases, sometimes approaching a particular person and striking up a conversation. Then change back and fly home, or sometimes to another destination. We sort of prodded the dates and places out of her. They match every recorded sighting of Roxanne Spaulding since Darwin, except for La Jolla and Chula Vista. She always suspected there was more to it than performance art, but she never did anything that seemed dangerous or criminal, and the pay was too good to give up without a reason."

"Who paid her?"

Jeffrey shook his head. "The money came through her agency, which got the commission from a Stuttgart art academy, funded by a corporate client. We may follow the money through a couple more changes before the trail disappears into the rocks. But we already know where it came from." He turned from the window. "The others have similar stories. The Rainmaker impersonator is a Bollywood actress. Our Chang is a Thai-American who models for clothes catalogs. The Bobby Lynch clone is a male escort from Belgium."

Monroe scoffed. "Good thing he just trimmed instead of shaving. Once the shock of being played again wears off, people will be making Ferris the subject of a few jokes."

"She didn't notice his curtains didn't match his rug because she was feeling frisky," Jeffrey said, warming. "She's smart. And having things go too well makes her suspicious. She noticed because she's damn good."

"I know that." The older man looked closely at him, but said no more.

Jeff turned back to the glass. The girl was rocking slightly in the chair, arms folded across her chest. "We don't even hold hands, Curt."

"I believe you. But what people perceive is more important than what's true sometimes. I doubt I'm the first to notice. Her career will hit the wall if the rumor mill puts you together."

Leni was wiping carefully at her swollen eyes. He felt fresh sympathy for the girl who'd suddenly learned the dangers of being a pawn in someone else's game. "What do I have to do, transfer?"

"I'd hate to lose you, Jeff. Ski is coming along, but he won't be as good an exec as you for quite a while yet. But one of you needs to step out of the spotlight soon, and Ferris can't bail on a launchpad assignment like this one, not without a damn good reason." The older man placed a hand on Jeff's shoulder. "If you want, I'll ask around about openings on another team."

"It's not fair, Sarge."

"No. But it's the way it is." Monroe dropped his hand and turned to the glass as well. The girl was glancing from the window – a mirror on her side, of course - to the door, on the verge of tears again, waiting for the next assault on her nerves and worldview. "What do you think we should do with her?"

"Like Ferris said. Concoct a story and send her on her way. They don't know anything, not even that they were impersonating real people. They'll get strict instructions about keeping quiet and contacting us if they're hired again, but I kind of doubt they will be. This was their first gig for Lynch since Chula Vista."

"Because we were on to the trick. Or thought we were. You don't think he killed those men in Murrieta just to freshen his little decoy gambit."

"No. He knew he and Devereaux left evidence, and I think he knew this time we'd come looking. So he obligingly provided us with some more false leads. But we moved faster than he expected, and caught his decoys before they split town." He turned away. "If the real Lynch mob was in Escondido, he wouldn't double their chances of being spotted by bringing their doppelgangers here. They're probably sipping champagne at some sidewalk café in Paris, laughing their asses off." He shrugged. "There are still plenty of unanswered questions, but we won't find those answers in Escondido. I think we're done here. I suppose we'll look for the other one for a while yet, but the thrill of the chase is gone, you know?"

"Other one? I thought we had them all."

Jeff watched the door of the interrogation room swing open, and Ferris walk in with a file in her hand. She looked down on the girl and spoke with a stern expression. He couldn't hear, but he already knew what she was saying, pretty much. "Apparently not. Leni was picked up at the airport by a new hire. A busty redhead. Guess Lynch finally found someone to impersonate Fairchild."

"Impersonate, or…"

"No." Jeff shook his head. "It wasn't her. Nothing in common but a resemblance."

Tuesday September 26 2006  
San Diego

Leni Mueller stepped out of the terminal with only a carryon, feeling out of sorts from her long trip. She'd gotten up early, slightly nauseated from lack of sleep and the faint chemical odor from her freshly-dyed hair, and driven an hour to the airport at Munchen. She'd spent two hours checking in and another eleven hours chasing the sun across the Atlantic. Then she'd spent two hours in the airport at Atlanta, eating a bland meal and reading, mostly reviewing her character's profile and going over her 'performance' itinerary while she waited for her connecting flight. Finally, she had boarded another Boeing for the five-hour flight to San Diego. The sun had dropped below the horizon as the plane had made its approach. Although the light in the west hadn't quite disappeared and commuters were still driving home, she'd been awake for twenty-three hours, and her body was telling her it was very early morning. She ached to spend a few hours in a real bed. Preferably one that included Kurt.

_No. Not quite yet._ She smiled to herself. Reading and looking out the tiny window at the cloud tops hadn't been the only things to occupy her mind the past eighteen hours. She and the 'Bobby' of their little troupe had been dancing around each other for most of their association. She'd been a bit put off at first, despite his heart-melting good looks, by what he did for a living, but that initial reluctance to pursue him had given her time to look past his appearance and sensual manner and get to know the real Kurt Montag instead of rushing headlong into sex. Their relationship had grown with the speed and inevitability of a glacier. By last April, Leni had been certain that the next time they worked together, they would become intimate.

But the next call hadn't come, and she'd begun to think she'd missed her chance. The distance between Augsburg and Brussels was not so very far, and of course there was the telephone and the Internet, but their contracts had stipulated no contact between 'performers' when not on assignment. The potential loss of further lucrative employment had been a strong disincentive to 'looking him up'. So had the thought of paying him a surprise visit and finding him at work. Now, Leni was determined that they not pass up what might be their last chance. _If only I weren't so tired. I want each time together to be perfect, especially the first. But if we only have these few days…_

A car rolled up to the curb, a fairly new blue Chevrolet sedan; it matched the description of the vehicle she'd been told to expect. But when she bent down to examine the driver, it wasn't Vidya or Kurt, but a strange girl. She was about to step back when the window rolled down, releasing the smell of cigarette smoke. "Leni?" The driver inquired, mispronouncing her name with a short _e_ rather than a long one.

She stepped back to the car. "Yes. Who are you?"

The door locks popped. "I'm candy. Hop in."

_Candy?_ It didn't sound like a proper name; some obscure idiom, perhaps. Leni looked her over. She was young, as they all were, and beautiful in a blatantly sexual way: tall and long-legged, breasts like pillows, shining red-gold hair and light green eyes. Leni wondered how much of her appearance was costume. The girl's face was expertly made up, but the foundation seemed a bit heavy for daytime. Then the term Leni had been puzzling over came to her. _Candy. American slang term for visual sex appeal, or sex itself._

Leni opened the front door and dropped into the seat, only to realize she couldn't buckle the restraint belt with her bag in her lap.

"Here." Her driver lifted the bag up and over the seat into the back. "You smoke?" She held a lighted cigarette between the first two fingers of the other hand.

Leni shook her head. "Only for show. My character smokes."

"Mine doesn't." She ground the smelly thing out in the console ash receptacle; Leni noticed the holder was almost full. "Pack a day habit. Staying away from cigs while I'm performing is the roughest part of the gig." The car pulled away from the curb, and the driver smiled at the windshield. "You look like a girl with questions. Or are you just staring at me because you're tired?"

"Both, I think. You say your name is 'Candy'?"

"Candace, really. But everybody just calls me Candi. Spelled with an 'I'. Is 'Leni' short for something?"

"Helena," she said, with extra emphasis on the second _e_, the long one. "We say 'Leni'."

"Oh. Sorry. Where you from? Not Atlanta."

"No, Austria. And you?"

"Buffalo, New York." She swung the car onto a broad highway. "We have a bit of a drive ahead."

"Of course."

"Your English is really good."

"Thank you. I studied for four years at university."

"Hmp. I never made it past high school. What do you do for a living? When you're not doing this, I mean."

"Dance."

"Really? Me too."

Leni blinked. "Not classical. Modern?"

The girl snorted. "Exotic." Leni must have looked blank, because Candi added, "Strip clubs. You know, get up on stage and make the boys go wild?"

"Ah." She shifted. "Is that stage makeup, then? It's very good, but I don't think you need it right now."

"I'm afraid I do. My character doesn't have freckles."

"Oh." She thought for a moment, then took the plunge. "What about the rest? The hair, and…"

"I was born with the hair. As for the 'and'…" The girl smiled down at her chest. "They're mine now. Worth every penny, too. Paid for themselves the first six months, just in tips. I'm the number-one draw at the club. I'm about ready to move on to something better, though."

"A different job?"

"No," she answered, seeming surprised at the question. "Just a different club. The one I work at is kind of a pit, really. I have to give my first two dances back to the house, plus every buddy of the manager's expects a free lap dance when he comes in, and guess who they all point at when he says, 'take your pick'. Could be worse, I suppose. There are clubs where the girls turn tricks in the toilet stalls."

"Turn… tricks?"

"Yeah. You know."

"Oh. That's terrible."

"Yeah. Like I said, not much longer. I sent pictures to clubs all over, including one in Toronto. That's a big step up, but I think I've got what it takes."

Leni felt her eyelids drooping as the day caught up with her again. "Candi, what are you supposed to do? I don't see you in any of my script."

"I've been here a couple weeks already, all by myself. Been hitting a lot of parks and nature trails. My character's a health nut or something. I wish I'd got some heads up about the running, though. I do a mile, I've got to go hide somewhere and cough up my lungs. Spose I should quit smoking anyway."

"Are the others here?"

"Just the boys. I think they got the casting call the same time you did. The little Asian guy… George?"

"Yes."

"_Cute_. But awful shy for a guy who models boxers and workout clothes, don't you think? George drove in from Texas this morning. I guess I'm the airport shuttle. I picked up Kurt a couple hours ago." Candi fanned her lap. "Hoo."

Leni suddenly felt much more awake. _Did you 'hit it off_''? _I'm sure you had no problem with what he does for a living. _"Was he… a gentleman to you?"

Candi gave her an amused look. "Strip joints are usually called 'gentleman's clubs' in this country, did you know that? He's got 'player' written all over him, and guys that gorgeous can't help flirting a little. It's in their DNA or something. But I got the clear impression he'd been hoping for somebody else to pick him up. Are you two…"

She relaxed. "Not yet. But I have plans of a sort. Do you have a boyfriend, Candi?" _Or, perhaps, many boyfriends?_

The red-haired girl stared out the windshield. "Sort of. But sometimes he seems too big a liability to keep. Other times, I don't know how I'd do without him." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Girls like me have the worst luck with guys."

Leni eyed her. "Oh, surely not." They chatted for a bit, and Leni questioned her driver in a roundabout way about her relationships, thinking to draw parallels between the showy _rothaarige_'s lifestyle and Kurt's. But Leni got the impression that, despite the girl's looks and vocation, she had limited experience with men. Her suspicion was confirmed when the big redhead remarked, "Strippers don't date much. Most of the ones I know think love is a myth. It's hard going from acquaintance to friendship with a guy who's seen you naked already, specially if you've been rocking in his lap making breathy little sounds in his ear. It puts too many assumptions in his head about how the first date's going to go, you know? He doesn't see you as a person, just a figure in his fantasy. And you have to be careful about fantasizing too. Thinking a guy _wants_ to get to know the real you is an easy way to get used."

"Candi, every girl has to watch out for that."

"Not like we do." Candi was staring out the windshield, but Leni thought the road wasn't claiming her whole attention. "I've lost count of the times a man has offered me money to go home with him, or just out to his car on my break. After a while, you can spot that kind as soon as they walk in. But… say this guy's been coming in every night for two weeks, and you get friendly. He seems nice, and he's okay with what you do for a living, and you talk with him on breaks about regular stuff. One night, he suggests going out after work for a drink. You decide to take a chance. One thing leads to another, and when he sees you to your door, you invite him in for coffee. Then you invite him to spend the night. He's gone when you wake up. He doesn't show the next night, or any other, and the number he gave you isn't his. Then you find out you're the star of the week on some porn site-"

"_What?_"

"Yeah. Showing video from a hidden camera he set up while you were in the bathroom. It burns out the capacity for trust pretty quick."

Leni coughed, as much from emotional discomfort as the taste of tobacco in her throat. "Didn't you say most of the girls have day jobs as well? Can't you meet a man there?"

"Sure. But you have to tell him sometime. When you do, you can watch the switch flip in his head. I don't know which are worst – the ones who turn all wary, or the ones who suddenly think they're God's gift to women because they're dating a stripper."

_Wary. Is that how Kurt sees me? _Leni strove to change the subject. "How were you picked for this?"

Candi shrugged. The gesture introduced secondary motions sure to draw the eye of any male, Leni was sure. Leni noted that Candi was a smooth and skillful driver, sliding into gaps in traffic before Leni was aware they were there. "I've got pictures on file with my agent. The guy does squat for me, but you've got to have one to get taken seriously. Somebody saw them somewhere and called him. For taking the frickin call, he gets twenty percent. But the money's still plenty good. I just wish I could count on it regular. How long have you been doing this?"

"Two years. But it's been a very long time since the last. I'd almost given up on being called again."

"Hm. Well, even once is enough to pay off my car. I'll take what I get, I guess." They pulled off the limited-access road into a residential neighborhood, and shortly arrived at a large brick two-story. "Four bedrooms upstairs. Hope you don't use them all." She gave Leni's hand a brief squeeze. "Good luck with that."

"Candi? Aren't you staying?" Leni hoped the relief she felt didn't show in her voice; the girl seemed nice enough.

Candi reached between the front seats and pulled up an expensive-looking silver cigarette case. She removed one and lit it. "No. Like you said, I'm not in your script. I've got another place, close to the part of town I'm working. In case you and Kurt are busy when I come back with Vidya, it's been nice meeting you. Maybe we'll do another gig sometime down the road."

Leni got out, pulled out her bag, and waved as the car drove off, already thinking of bed again. But not of sleep.

Escondido

Anna folded items from the dryer and placed them in her basket, taking her time. The laundry could have waited another day, but she had other reasons to loiter in the basement. Presently, she heard the soft chime, audible only to her, that announced someone using the escape tunnel to the two-bay garage at the other end of the block. She finished her work with blurring speed, then moved to the rack covering the hidden door panel and waited. A minute later, the passage opened, and the little cyber smiled wide. "Welcome home, hon. Any problems?"

Caitlin stepped through the opening, rubbing the crown of her head. "I could wish the tunnel was a little taller. I think I banged my head on the beams five times each way."

"Sorry about that. I didn't give the tunnel much attention when I put this place together. I thought we'd only be using it once, if ever."

Caitlin reached into her purse and pulled out Roxanne's silver cigarette case. "And I can't wait to get out of these clothes and take a shower. The smell of my hair makes my eyes water. I should have bought Roxy another pack of coffin nails. It's the least I could do for the face job she did on me. But I don't think I could have stood the sight."

"You do smell rather like the inside of a sweeper bag." Anna's tone turned mischievous. "So, how did it go?"

Kat closed the panel and latched it. "Mission accomplished, I think. They all seemed convinced."

"Of _course_ they were." _And now if those boys from the park, or anyone else in IO's web, report seeing a tall drop-dead redhead, you're covered. _"But was it _fun_?"

The big redhead grudged a smile. "Some. And way easier than I expected. I just remembered the stuff Tony and Adrienne said about working in clubs, and the cover story nearly told itself."

"I knew it. You're almost glowing."

"Well, my stomach almost dropped to my knees the first trip to the airport. When Kurt stepped to the curb, I almost called him 'Bobby.' They could be twins. And the others are almost as close, Leni especially. That made seeing them all together _very_ weird."

"Oh? Why?"

The two of them walked towards the laundry area, Anna taking two strides to each of Kat's. "Well… Leni and Kurt are an item. They haven't Done It yet, but the looks that pass between them just _smolder_. And Vidya likes George, and flirts with him till he blushes." Kat grinned. "Individually, they're so like our crew you'd have to know the originals to tell the difference. But when you put them in a room and they pair off… it looks. So. Wrong." The girl's smile faded. "You're sure they're going to be all right?"

Anna picked up her full basket and headed up the wide stairs, Kat following. "Positive. The pickup team will have orders to take them alive, and there won't be any Genactive surprises, so the agents won't get carried away. They'll be questioned, told some story, and released."

"I hope Kurt and Leni get their chance first."

"Hon, the charade is over. They can see each other now."

"Oh. Right." They reached the second-floor landing, and Caitlin turned towards her room. "The star-crossed lovers, together at last." Her cell phone chimed, and she looked at the display. "Hm. I don't recognize this number." She flipped it open. "Hello?"

Saturday September 30 2006

"Roxanne, what are we doing here? You know Mr. Lynch doesn't like people poking around in his study."

"Whatever," the little pixie said, scanning the pictures on the walls. "Quite a step up from that closet he had at the beach house. You can tell Anna did this one." She moved to the big wood desk and the curio shelves flanking it. "I thought sure – _yes_!" She picked a framed photo off a bookshelf. "I knew she'd copy them. Take a look."

Sarah examined the slightly faded photograph in her sister's hands. It showed a group of soldiers posed in front of a large green helicopter. Even if it hadn't been a little washed-out, she would have been certain the photo was old, though she couldn't have said why. The uniforms and equipment seemed Vietnam-era. Even the way the men held their weapons pointed at the sky seemed old-fashioned; didn't soldiers carry their weapons pointing at the ground now? But the men weren't a bunch of young draftees posing at their base camp. They all looked old enough to be sergeants, at least, and comfortable with danger and violence. And there were no rank or service markings on their uniforms, not even name tags. But they were at ease, wherever they were and whatever they were doing presently, grouped sitting and standing around… she peered closer at the man the others were centered around. _Could it be…_

"Spooky, isn't it? To see him with two good eyes."

"My god. What a total collection of bad boys. Is-"

"The blond hunk is Kat's dad. The Oriental guy is Eddie's." Roxanne touched her finger to the center of the photo. "And, last but not least, our father."

Sarah studied the blocky, brown-haired man standing right behind Mr. Lynch with a hand on his shoulder. You couldn't tell from a photo, of course, but he didn't seem like the sort of man who'd seduce married women and young girls. He stared out at her from the picture, and some trick of the camera angle made it seem as if he was looking right at her. A tiny smile marked the corner of his mouth.

"Well," Roxanne said, "what do you think?"

"I think we must both resemble our mothers."

"Uh huh."

"And that he just doesn't seem my mother's type."

"Mine either. With all the guys Mom brought home, she never settled for ordinary. Alex Fairchild, I could see. But this guy… He must have had a lot of charm."

"Or allure."

"Yeah." Roxanne's eyes widened. "Wait. I just thought… Gawd. Mr. Lynch. I mean, _I_ never thought about it. But Kat…"

"Maybe. I think it's not always universal. Certainly Nicole's didn't work on Bobby, but I'm pretty sure mine does."

"Or maybe it's just your booty." Roxanne turned back to the photo, and her smile disappeared. "It was bad enough thinking Kat's dad got Mom between the sheets with charm and good looks. Now I look at my real dad, and… oh, god."

"And you think that's how he did it. He discovered that he had the ultimate date-rape drug, and put it to use on any female who took his fancy." Sarah tapped the image of John Lynch on the chest. "He trusted these men with his life. Do you think he could do that with a man capable of what you're thinking?"

"People change. Look at the date in the corner. Nine years before you were born. Eleven for me. Bet they weren't even Gen yet in this picture. Mr. Lynch sure doesn't seem like the same guy, and I'm not talking about the scars."

"Darlings," Anna said from the doorway, "what are you doing in here?"

As an apology half-formed on Sarah's lips, Roxanne said, "Please. You heard every word, Anna. You know what we're doing in here."

"I did hear everything." The mysterious little creature who called Sarah _shikasin_ stepped in and shut the door. "I know you were looking at old photos and discussing all your fathers. But I still don't know what need brought you here."

Roxanne replaced the picture on its shelf. "Just trying to get a handle on the guy who knocked our mothers up."

Anna drifted to the shelf and picked up the photo. "You're right, sweetie. People do change. A lot happened to all these men since this picture was taken. They weren't even in IO yet. At the time, they were working for the CIA, on a secret mission to bring an end to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia. They were recruited from every branch of the service, but mostly they were Green Berets like Jack. When Jack was recruited to IO, he brought the others with him. They were together as a team for years, and became like brothers. Jack was very surprised to learn about you two. You'll have to ask your mothers the particulars of your conceptions, but Jack's sure Stephen never knew. I never met him, but I'm convinced Stephen Callahan wasn't a man who'd abandon his children." She set the photo down and picked up an album from the shelf below it. "This is an original. Jack doesn't look at it often, so I was able to liberate it and bring it here." She flipped through pages, stopping about halfway through. "Here." She turned the book around to present it to the two girls.

On the open pages of the book were a series of photos, group shots taken in a church, baptisms. The two pages seemed to be recording separate occasions: the same people were present in each, but the woman in the shots was differently clothed. Each photo was composed of Stephen Callahan, a woman with a baby, a priest, and John Lynch, still looking at the world with two good eyes. All four adults were gathered around the baby, holding it in a basin while the priest cupped its tiny head and drizzled water over it.

"Matt and Nicole's christenings," Anna said. "Jack is their godfather, the man Stephen and Lissa Callahan asked to raise their kids and keep them from harm if anything should happen to them. Those children's fate is another ghost that used to visit in the night. But this is what I want to show you."

She flipped the page again. The next two photos showed Stephen holding a squalling baby in his arms with his wife looking over his shoulder, one hand resting possessively on his forearm. Sarah noted that Lissa Callahan was quite good-looking, the sort who'd have her pick of suitors, an unlikely match for a pleasantly plain man at least ten years her senior. Stephen was staring down at his bundle, his features softened with love and eyes shiny.

"The book isn't Jack's, actually," Anna said softly. "It's Lissa's. Pictures of Stephen and the kids, and sometimes her, a memory book she put together after he was killed." She shut it and presented it to Roxanne. "Look through it, and tell me what kind of man sired you."

Twenty minutes later, Roxanne unsteadily replaced the book on its shelf and wiped her eyes. Sarah felt near tears as well, after watching the longing fill her half-sister's face as she'd flipped through the pages. "Well," Roxanne said steadily, "He was a great dad, and his wife adored him, but it just makes what he did even stranger. Mom owes me an explanation someday."

-0-

Wednesday October 4 2006

"Sorry." Roxanne passed Anna a sheet of drawing paper folded into a homemade card. "I didn't get you anything before we got locked down."

The little cyber dried her hands on the dishtowel and tucked it into the oven handle. "Sweetheart. You remembered." She took the proffered card and studied it without opening it.

"Yeah, well, I have a lot of time to think lately. Kat's the only one who bought you anything. Cuz she got it, like, two weeks ago, natch. Bobby's writing you a song, I think. I don't know what Eddie and Sarah are doing, but something. This is all I could think of."

"This is a wonderful gift. I had no idea you were so talented. I'm going to hang this somewhere."

Roxy scoffed. "Stick it on the fridge with a magnet, maybe?"

"No. I'm dead serious. This is very good." The picture, done in colored pencil, depicted Anna dressed in a few small leaves strategically placed. A snake thrashed under her bare foot, vainly trying to free itself. The picture-Anna ignored it while she regarded an apple in her hand, as if debating whether to take a bite. "If you think I'm just being diplomatic, we can ask Jack for his opinion; he's the art expert around here. But I already know what he'll say. The likeness is perfect. But I think I'm missing something. Does the scene have some special meaning?" She opened the card.

_Happy B-day Anna_

_A girl who knows how to see through BS_

_And make her own decisions_

"It's from the Bible, sort of," Roxy said from over Anna's shoulder. "Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve? The serpent and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the story, the Devil disguises himself as a snake and talks Eve into taking a bite so she can never be innocent again. That's the Sunday school version, anyway."

Still intent on the picture, Anna said, "Innocence is highly overrated."

"Yeah. I always thought the snake got too much credit for the decision, you know?" Roxanne grinned. "So, how old are you now?"

"I can't be sure anymore. I woke up in that lab ten years ago today, but I know now that I'm at least seventeen and a half."

"Be a shame to miss turning eighteen just cuz you don't know the date. Isn't there some way to find out?"

"Only if I can find the ones who made me. It's just not at the top of my to-do list right now."

A tone sounded from the study across the hall: an alert message from the computer. Roxanne said, "What's that?"

Anna headed for the study, picture still in hand. "If I'm not mistaken, another birthday present, from IO. A nice one."


	12. Turning Point

Thursday October 6 2006

Escondido

"_Hey, you._"

Caitlin smiled into the phone at the sound of Adrienne's voice. "Hey, stranger. I tried calling a couple times since Friday, but all I got was voicemail."

"_Never got your message._"

She felt an invisible barrier go up, tenuous but still tangible. "I don't leave voice messages. Texts either. It's…"

"_Bad security. Kat. What do you people __do__? Rhetorical question, I'm not really asking._" A pause. "_I've been thinking about you, girlfriend. You still in hiding?_"

She thought of protesting her caller's choice of words, but decided against. "Pretty much. I'm hoping to see Dan this weekend, but I'm not sure." She shifted on the cushions of the couch in Sarah's room. She was alone, since the room's owner had spent the night with her boyfriend; Sarah had said the lounge was anyone's to use, day or night, if she wasn't in the bedroom, and any girl's if she was; Kat had come in to watch the desert-dawn light show, which was just ending. She glanced at her watch: seven A.M. "You're up _early_."

A little laugh. "_Up with the sun, instead of rising from my coffin at dusk? Dan took me off the no-contact list at daycare. I still can't pick him up, but I can watch him play at morning recess._"

Kat felt a little flush of pleasure, and not just for her friend. Daniel's hardness on certain issues bothered her more than what he did for a living. Unlike Mr. Lynch's, it seemed based on pride rather than principle, and struck her as a mean streak. His harsh treatment of his ex and the way he'd gone nuclear on those delinquents at the park sometimes made Kat wonder what sort of man she was involved with. A hint that he was unbending a little eased her mind. "That's great, Adrienne. What changed his mind?"

"_Can't say, really,_" was the offhand reply. "_Maybe all the time he's spending away from Andy has something to do with it. I'm pretty sure he hasn't told him he's talking to me on the phone every night, either._"

The barrier rose a little higher, and firmed a bit. _He didn't tell me either,_ Kat thought. "What do you guys talk about?"

"_Oh, things. Drew, mostly. Little details of our lives apart, telling each other how well we're doing. And you, of course, but I'm not going to repeat any of that, so don't ask._" Her tone changed. "_Are you okay? You and __you__, I mean._"

_What has he been telling her about me that she won't share? Not our secrets, surely._ "Home life is good. Everybody's getting along, and most of my courses are online, so I'm not falling behind. And I told you I telecommute, so that's okay. The hardest thing about the forced seclusion is not seeing you guys. But the phone calls help."

"_That's only half an answer._"

"I know." She took a breath. "It's hard with us, even when we're together. He's a great guy, but…" She hesitated, waiting for Adrienne to put in a comment, but the air on the other side of the phone was still. She got up and moved to the second-story window, the only clear one in the house you could stand at, and looked eastward at the glowing Rockies. Somewhere over that huge barrier lay Boulder, and Daniel. "It isn't just about being in rival firms. There are differences between us as big as the ones between him and you. And trust issues we haven't addressed that have nothing to do with the people we work for." She stepped back and sat on Sarah's big bed. "The first night I met him, when we said goodnight, I actually offered to cancel our date for the next day, just forget the whole thing. It was that close."

"_Yeah. Sometimes I think telling you you were perfect for each other was a little glib._" Her tone lightened. "_Don't give up yet, sugar. Remember what I said about finding the perfect one? Maybe all you need is time together. To adjust._"

The barrier slid all the way up and locked in place. _Adjust. If Anna's right, by the time IO is out of our lives, the world will be in social and economic freefall, and probably at war. And, depending on how the battle lines are drawn, we may still be on opposite sides. That's some adjustment. _"If you say so. Guess we'll have to wait and see."

Boulder

"Ferris is in a mood today," Watts observed as he sighted his Glock downrange. He sent a bullet into the holographic target and studied the result. "Target six."

Dan, farthest from the door, glanced down the row of firing positions to where his team leader was aiming her weapon with bared teeth. He looked along the range at Ferris's target. The image was dim at this angle, but it looked like her target was tall and red-haired.

"Can't blame her," Anderson said beside him. None of them were wearing earmuffs, and so could talk freely between shots. "Lynch pinned a 'kick me' sign on her ass day before yesterday."

Dan sighted on his own target, number forty-nine, one of the 'insurgent' series: A bearded man in a checkered head scarf and khaki fatigues, firing an AK on the run. The target was actually in motion, in a repeating twenty-second video loop, running from cover to cover in a crouch as he fired. The simulation wasn't perfect – the target didn't actually change position relative to the shooter, only the background behind him – but it was a whole lot more challenging than a static target. Dan fired at the sprinting figure, and the three-dimensional image froze. A red dot strobed on the figure's shoulder just below the collarbone. "Guess it's just as well they didn't let us tag along, then."

"Heads up," a man called as the light above the entrance lit, signaling that someone was about to enter. The firing paused, although it wasn't a range rule; the courtesy of letting a newcomer don muffs before firing resumed was needless here. But curiosity about new arrivals was only to be expected in this clannish group, Dan thought.

The door opened, and Director Colby's pretty blonde aide, Cheryl Carson, held it open for the wheelchair-bound man to squeeze by. She followed, a gun case in her hand. Colby rolled along the firing line offering greetings and occasional comments on the men's marksmanship. He reached the end of the row, where the rookies had been more or less assigned spots, and addressed them as a group. "Well, gentlemen. How do you like the range?"

"Kicks ass, sir," Jared said.

Colby smiled. "But never as good as the real thing, eh?"

"Not unless they build one that shoots back."

"Don't give the engineers any ideas." He rolled past Dan and offered him a hand. "Good to see you again, Grissom. My boys been treating you right? Not too rough on you last weekend?" The trip to Pendleton had been a weird combination of conspirators' meeting and bachelor party, and cemented his place among Colby's people.

"Been treating me like a long-lost brother, sir." Colby's grip was solid as ever. Dan held the man's hand, and his eyes, and tried to put more meaning into the polite statement without the others noticing anything. "Thanks for having them show me around, and for everything else."

Jared grinned downrange, no doubt thinking of Dan dodging Nicole every night with the Director's off-duty bodyguards. Anderson gave him a thoughtful look.

Colby nodded and moved on. The firing line ended two booths later at a bench that was considerably lower than the others: a sitting position, but without a seat. Colby turned his chair downrange and locked his wheels. Carson set her case on the bench in front of him, and he pulled a Glock from it. Dan noted that the weapon was a Twenty, the manufacturer's ten-millimeter model. As Operations' alpha dog inserted a magazine and checked his weapon, he said to Dan, "I've been looking over your file, Grissom. Kirkuk, Sadr City, Al Arar… you've seen some serious action. Target Two-oh-six."

Dan looked at Colby's choice: a large man holding a woman in front of him as a hostage and a shield. "I've seen the sights, sir. Nothing you'd call a battle."

Colby locked his arms in an isosceles grip. Cher Carson discreetly gripped the handles at the back of Colby's chair just as he fired, steadying him. A point of light strobed in the perp's forehead. "I visited some of the same tourist destinations, Dan, about ten or twelve years earlier. You don't need to play modest." He fired again, and a blinking light appeared at the base of the perp's gun hand. "The combat-skills contests are coming up in a couple weeks. Any of you boys thinking of entering?"

"Marksmanship, maybe," Jared said. "I took the sniper course my first tour." He looked at the strobing lights on Colby's target. "I might have to come down here every day to practice up, though."

From three spaces down, Watts said, "Hand-to-hand. I hear it's gonna be wide open this year, lots of new contestants."

Colby said, "I heard that too." He fired again, and his next light blinked in the perp's neck an inch from the hostage's head. Behind him, Cher glared at Watts, who looked back at her, perplexed. Dan remembered that there had been a lot of IO trophies on Colby's glory wall.

A few rounds later, Colby said to Dan, "Looks like you're making friends among your team."

Dan's belly tightened as he sighted on his target. "Yes, sir. They're good people."

"It's important for a team to be tight-knit," Colby agreed, also looking downrange. "You all have to be sure of each other. I had some doubts about taking you away from your teammates early in your training. I thought it might create bonding issues."

_Before long, I may have to betray them. He's asking me if I'm ready for that._ "No problems, sir. I know who I'm with."

They all plinked a few more rounds. As Colby changed his magazine, he said, "The Director has suggested I increase my security. I'm going to be expanding my team by one or two agents soon. You get along with my people, Grissom, and you've got the rest of what it takes. If you're agreeable, we could start cutting the paperwork today."

With his last round chambered, Dan stared down the range without seeing his target. If Dan accepted the offer, his chances of going toe-to-toe with Kat and her friends would be almost nonexistent. But the Lynch Mob would lose the mole on their pickup team. His position might have already saved Kat from capture once. "Thank you, sir, that's very generous. But I'm sure there are more experienced men who'll line up for the job. I think I'd better stay on point."

Colby removed the full magazine from his weapon and handed both to the girl. "Your dedication is admirable, Dan. I see why my men like you. They're going to be disappointed." He unlocked the wheels of his chair. "But I understand completely." He rolled towards the door.

Anderson looked at Dan as if he'd just seen him peek down the barrel of his Glock to see if it was loaded. "Did I really just hear the Director of Operations offer you a spot on his personal team? And you turned him down?"

Dan returned his attention to the range. "I think I can do more good here."

Al Arar, Anbar Province, Iraq

Monday July 4 2005

"Days like this," Sergeant Driscoll said, "I could wish I was a fobbit." He looked over the Humvee's steering wheel through the cloud of dust stirred up by the highback full of Marines in front of him. "A quartermaster maybe. Sit in an air-conditioned office counting grenades and condoms all day. Then at night, I could give dance lessons to lonely officers' wives."

Lieutenant Dan Grissom shifted in the passenger seat, trying to get comfortable inside the gun truck, which was already an oven three hours before noon. He looked through the glassless side window at the empty doorways and windows as they passed. "Two problems with that. One, you've got two left feet."

"I could learn. I just need incentive."

"Two, you wouldn't last ten days in an office without ending up in the brig. You're safer here." He craned his head up to look at a second-story window in which he thought he'd seen movement.

The truck bumped jarringly, making him jump in reaction. _Not an IED, just a stray chunk of rubble._ The buildings on either side were all scarred from small-arms and cannon fire, many of them damaged so badly that their exterior walls had collapsed, exposing their interiors and dumping tons of rubble into the street below. The debris had been haphazardly cleared by shoving it up on the sidewalks and against the buildings. The road, originally a four-lane, was in places scarcely wide enough for their vehicles to navigate in single file.

"Sorry, Skipper. Can't drive around em all. This thing's a little wider than an IFAV. Doesn't handle the same way either," Driscoll grumbled. "Miss those G-wagons. Can bet I'll never drive another Benz, not on my pay."

"You'll never own a Hummer, either."

"Fine by me. Who'd pay sixty kay to drive one of these if he ever had to do it for a living?"

Grissom turned to take in the crowded, gritty interior, packed with equipment, and the legs of the gunner standing in the turret behind him. "The ones they sell in the dealerships are a little different, Sarge."

"If I had one of those, I'd still think of this one every time I drove it." Driscoll wiped grit from his cheek with the back of his hand, revealing shining skin the color of cocoa. "Maybe I'm just being all cacked about it, but it seems like we got a million better things to do than run street patrol."

Dan understood the man's irritation, and shared it. The United States Marine Corps was America's elite light infantry, trained and equipped for speed, maneuver, and flexibility. Force Recon was the point of the Marine spear. Running a patrol circuit like a toy train through these streets was worse than a waste of their training and talent; the terrain and the strictures of their orders canceled most of their advantages and left them vulnerable. Fighting here had been very heavy, both during the initial liberation and the present 'pacification' phase. The news media sometimes called Al Arar 'the Stalingrad of Iraq'. The troops, understandably, weren't happy with the comparison.

Dan remembered watching CNN at a Stateside officer's club early in the invasion with a group of men scheduled to go 'over there', and thinking the media were treating the contest of national wills involving thousands of lives as if it was the Superbowl. A news report had shown an Iraqi defensive line that had been abandoned to the advancing U.S. troops without a shot fired. The newscaster had held up an Iraqi uniform, almost smirking, saying that the trenches had been filled with them. He'd practically crowed at the picture of a brigade of Saddam's finest shedding their uniforms and fading away at the approach of coalition forces.

Dan, and the men with him, had looked at the scene with professional eyes and deep unease. The 'mass desertion' had been damned well-organized. The men had just happened to each bring a change of civilian clothing with them to the front, miles from the nearest town, and hadn't had a bit of trouble getting transport when it was time to bug out. He'd noted that they'd taken all their weapons and ammo and anything that could be easily carried, leaving behind little more than their worthless uniforms. At the start of the invasion, Iraq's Foreign Minister had promised to show the West 'a new kind of war'. To Dan and the men watching with him, that abandoned line had looked like the start of hostilities, not the end.

He head-shrugged. "Apparently not when the Chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee's in town. Every grunt and vehicle Command can dig up is prowling the streets and keeping things quiet."

The sergeant scoffed. "As if they're gonna let him come within rocket range of _here_."

"He's been getting rosy reports about how this town is turning around. It wouldn't do for him to hear a firefight from his hotel balcony. He might ask the liaison officer a question he doesn't have a quick answer for."

"Turning around?" They looked out at the blasted streets. Theirs were the only vehicles on the road, except for abandoned ones half-buried at the unseen curb, and pedestrians faded into doorways at the Marines' approach. Both men knew that the area had been occupied by insurgents, hostiles, or a street gang just minutes before, and the Ali Babas would reclaim their turf and its people as soon as the convoy was out of sight. "Who the fuck's been telling him that?"

"At a guess, the same people who're telling the President we can handle things just fine over here with the available manpower."

Dan wondered what was eating his sergeant. Driscoll wasn't usually a griper, and didn't talk much on patrol, either. But ever since they'd slipped out from under the sensor masts of the outer perimeter, the man had been chatty as a nervous bride. Even though this patrol was no different than the ones they'd been running for most of the week, Dan had come to trust his sergeant's instincts. Something was up.

Three teenage boys loitered around a bent streetlight that poked out of the rubble like a solitary weed. They grinned and gave a thumbs-up as the six-truck patrol rolled past. Dan didn't return or acknowledge the gesture. Before the coalition had moved into Iraq, an upraised thumb had meant the same thing here as an upraised middle finger did back home. Although the locals now knew its meaning to the Americans who prowled their streets looking for trouble, Dan was sure that, in this neighborhood, the young punks were just enjoying flipping them off with impunity.

Driscoll wiped at his face again. "Damn dust. Feel like I haven't had a shower in a month."

Dan didn't bother to comment. Iraq seemed to have just two seasons: the wet-and-cold season and the too-damned-hot season. The soil changed radically with the calendar as well. In the winter, it was cold mud, slippery and gluey at the same time, a terrain hazard that sometimes hampered their movements. When the weather dried out and warmed, it became dense as asphalt. As summer wore on, tires and treads and feet turned it into fine dust that covered everything and found its way into every space, turning the world a uniform reddish tan.

"Start counting the days yet?" Driscoll didn't look his way, instead looking out the front and side windows with eyes that were never still.

"No. It's bad luck." But he was. _Twenty-three, including today. I wish I had some idea what was waiting for me when I get back._ Things between him and Adrienne were about to come to a head. She'd told him on his last leave that she wanted a divorce. His father would cheer, he supposed, but Dan would have preferred to work things out, for their son's sake if for no other reason. Besides, even with all the quarreling they did anymore, he didn't feel ready to let go. Maybe that would change once he was home for good and ready to resume life in The World. "But I'd have to say-"

A bullet punched into the hood of the Humvee, accompanied by the distinctive burp of an AK. "Shooter!" The gunner called down unnecessarily as he returned fire, making the truck shiver and dust spring off every surface. He paused as the other two gun trucks' fifty-cals kicked in. "Rooftop, at the intersection. The three-story just right of center." Marines spilled out of their vehicles and returned fire, gnawing away at the raised lip along the front of the roof and sending showers of concrete chips into the street. Dan called on the radio, "Green Arrow Three to Hugo Bright. Contact at Bravo Two Niner. Taking fire from a rooftop."

"_Hold position_," said the voice from headquarters. Dan hadn't expected anything else, but it was still frustrating. Constant radio contact with HQ while out on patrol was supposed to be a protective measure and a way to effectively utilize their stretched resources, but Dan thought it was just a way for senior officers to micromanage from relative safety. At least his men weren't saddled with helmet cams like some units, he thought. Some of the troops swung around to cover the other buildings, looking for more trouble. Others surrounded the building. The entry team 'stacked up' at the main entrance, moving into position for a sudden assault on the door. The entry team leader kept his eyes on Dan, waiting for the go-ahead.

Command was back in Dan's ear. "_Green Arrow Three, clear the building. Watch for tripwires, it might be a house bomb._"

"Yes, Mother," he said before he switched on the mike. "Roger. Going in now." He gave a signal. The two Marines in the front of the stack blew the door down with shotguns and stepped aside as two others swung rifles into the opening. A moment later, one of them gave a signal, and the rest of the team flowed inside.

Vehicle doors slammed farther down the line. The team's interpreter approached in a crouch next to his Marine escort, both of them keeping close to the vehicles. The terp was dressed much as they were, in desert-camo BDUs and body armor; a little Iraqi flag on the side of his fritz helmet was the only deliberate distinguishing mark on his uniform. But he still stuck out like a clown in church.

Units that had interpreters and native guides were careful to safeguard them. The men usually came from a different area than the one in which they served, and were never called by their real names, at least not in public. But in Al Arar, the troops had been forced to take extra precautions. Al-Qaeda had made a special effort to identify terps here and to target their families, even ones living halfway across the country. Several terps had quit, despite the high pay and a dismal job market back home. So anyone seen loitering around terps, especially with a camera, got 'special attention'. And the terps attached to Force Recon units, at least, wore ski masks on duty, and were accompanied by an armed and alert Marine wherever they went.

Another distinguishing mark was the old-style body armor, whose design, Dan was fairly sure, dated back to the Vietnam era. He hoped the actual armor didn't - it deteriorated over time – but he wouldn't lay money. He could understand the rationale behind issuing the native forces second-rate gear: too many of them deserted with their equipment, and it was finding its way into the hands of the insurgents. But Dan was sure every civilian they dealt with noticed the differences, and marked them. Taken together with the mask and the escort, they made 'Jamal' look a lot less like a partner in providing right governance to the Iraqi people, and more like a monkey on a leash.

"Stay down," Dan said. "He might still be up there." Not that he'd have much chance to shoot again, with all the eyes on the building and suppressive fire chewing up its facade. He watched Jamal's masked face lift to stare upwards, not scanning the roofline like many of the Marines, but fixed on one point. Dan tracked the man's gaze to a snarl of makeshift electrical cables hanging off a pole at the intersection, probably linking private diesel generators to paying customers around the neighborhood for interim power during the city's frequent service interruptions. The current was carried by any sort of lines available, from heavy service wire to appliance cords, and looked like a fire about to happen.

Jamal nodded up at the rat's nest of power cords. "I used to be an engineer for the electrical utility," he said in faintly accented English. "That scares me more than one man with a gun."

Driscoll's voice came over the radio. "_All clear._" Dan gave the order to cease fire, and waited.

Presently the sergeant came out of the building carrying a Kalashnikov. "No sign of the shooter, or how he got away, but he's gone. One occupant, an old lady on the ground floor. Found the AK in a trunk. It's not the one we're looking for."

"Household weapon?"

Driscoll nodded. "Hasn't been fired since Saddam's election, looks like." Firearms were as common as radios in Iraq, even more ingrained in their culture than in the U.S., and every household was allowed a weapon for home defense, a commentary of sorts on the coalition's ability to keep order.

"Think she knows something, Sarge?"

"Even if she doesn't, we have to take her in." Sergeant Driscoll unlatched the magazine and swung it out and presented it to his lieutenant.

Dan glanced at the rounds inside: armor-piercers, good for a trip to jail for any civvie caught with them. "Well, let's talk to her here first, anyway." He entered the building with Driscoll, Jamal, and two Marines.

The apartment occupied one corner of the first floor. It was large, with several rooms, but plain and poor and had clearly seen better days: threadbare carpets on the floor, marks on the wall where pictures or other decorations had once hung. Jamal shrugged. "Sold, probably, not stolen."

The lady of the house was standing in the living room between a pair of Marines, looking rather like a nun with her black headscarf and tight-clasped hands. As soon as she saw Jamal, she launched into a long speech. Grissom understood a little spoken Arabic, but he couldn't make out one word in ten of the woman's rapid chatter. Jamal listened until the woman paused for breath, then spoke in a low, calming voice. Dan caught the words: "_Please be calm, Auntie. Where are your sons?_"

But the woman picked right up where she'd left off as soon as she drew breath, as if she hadn't heard the question. She wrung her hands as she spoke and looked all around the room without meeting the Marines' eyes. Eventually she wound down.

Jamal said, "She says she lives here alone, husband dead and sons run away. She lives on handouts from neighbors." He glanced at Dan to see how he was digesting the story. "Yeah. She says she bought the gun for protection from thieves. She can't remember where. The bullets came with the gun, and she doesn't know anything about them. She's never fired it."

"Bull_shit_," Driscoll said. Iraq's traditional respect for the elderly and its extended family networks made the idea of an old woman abandoned to a life alone in poverty unthinkable; any trooper with a week's experience in the Sandbox would know she was lying. Likewise the story about the gun: weapons might be easy to get, but they weren't bought or owned by women. On the other hand, her telling such bald lies hoping to be believed showed how little contact she had with outsiders. Somebody was keeping her close to home and taking care of her.

Jamal drew a breath to speak, but the woman fired up again, voice rising. Jamal gave him a glance, as if signaling, and then shouted, surprising everyone and shutting off the woman's voice as abruptly as flipping a switch. "_Stupid woman! Don't you know…_" Dan lost the rest of it as the terp's voice rose and quickened. Jamal's gestures became larger and more aggressive; the woman shrank, seemingly near tears. Dan began to wonder if the man had wigged out, and if they should stop him. "._..going to jail. Do you know what happens to women there? Not from these men, but they will turn you over to others. You will be… and shamed before men._"

The woman began to keen. Jamal shoved his face into hers, still shouting. "_We will have the truth! And when we are done with you, your sons will never look at you again._" And then Dan was certain Jamal _had_ wigged out, because he turned to the officer and addressed him in Arabic. "_Take her to prison,_" he said in a voice loud enough to be heard all through the building. "_Take her into the street with her head bare. Let everyone get a good look._"

Another voice cried out from the next room. "Mother_fucker_!" Grunts and thumps. Driscoll threw out an arm to bar Grissom's way and moved towards the clamor, but before he got two steps, they heard, "Got him."

The woman had started towards the doorway at the noise as well, but had been blocked by Jamal and one of the Marines. The terp's eyes never left her face.

In the next room, Dan and Driscoll found two Marines holding down a civvie, a young man, with a knee in his back and a rifle pointed at his head. The kneeling trooper secured the boy's wrists behind him with a plastic cable tie. "Not armed. Just popped through the door at a run. Almost shot him."

"Her son," Jamal said unnecessarily.

"Sergeant," Lieutenant Grissom said mildly, "I thought I gave orders to clear this building."

Driscoll's jaw clenched. "You two. Leave him. Tear this place apart. Find the hole this rabbit came out of." He unslung his rifle and beckoned through the doorway to the woman, who was carrying on like someone was breaking her arm. She rushed in, flanked by Jamal and her escorts. When she fell across the boy bawling, Driscoll said to the incoming Marines, "You too."

The civvie sat up cross-legged on the floor with his mother's arms around him, glaring up at Jamal. And spoke at length. Jamal gave him no answer. Dan said to the terp, "How did you know?"

"Her voice. So loud, like she was talking to somebody outside the room. I made a guess."

"What did he say to you?"

Jamal adjusted his ski mask. "Oh, the usual."

From the other rooms came the sounds of a search being conducted heedless of damage: thumping and clattering, grunts, a heavy crash Dan felt through his boot soles, followed by a curse.

"Sergeant," a man called. Driscoll followed the voice through the doorway.

Dan looked the kid on the floor over: early twenties maybe, clean-shaven – or maybe he couldn't grow facial hair yet – and hair neat but dusty. There was dirt ground into the knees of his pants, as if he'd been crawling.

A Marine appeared at the doorway. "Sarge wants you to take a look, sir. I'll stay here with them."

Two rooms away, in a small storage room at the back of the apartment, Driscoll and another Marine waited. A heavy chest on a rumpled rug sat near the middle of the room. Against the wall, a trapdoor leaned, exposing a small rectangular hole in the floor. Dan peered into the opening, and saw a dirt floor six or eight feet below and a low passage leading away, vanishing into darkness.

"Loews says the chest and the rug were against the wall when they cleared the room. He opened the chest, but he didn't think to move it."

Dan looked at the heavy chest. "Doesn't look like he came in this way then, Sarge. Unless he's got a hiding place in the apartment."

"We're still looking. Go down and take a look?"

Dan thought not. The sappers had little wheeled RGVs with cameras for this sort of thing, and he was disinclined to risk a man on a job a robot could do just as well. He said, "Got some Silly String?"

The Marine handed him a small aerosol can. Dan gave it a quick shake and sent a thin stream of brightly-colored foam over the floor of the passage as far as he could reach. The foam cured in midair, and settled, light as spider silk, to the ground.

But not all of it came to rest in the dirt. At a spot almost out of sight in the darkness, it draped over something unseen a couple inches off the ground: a tripwire. _Guess it's a house bomb after all,_ Dan thought. "Drop in a few smokes and close it up. Let's see if it goes somewhere."

"Looks like it goes under the outside wall. I'm betting it comes out under the house next door."

Dan remembered reading something about the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland, where the Jews had made a desperate stand to keep from being transported to the death camps. Prior to the uprising, they'd connected the basements of numerous buildings with a network of tunnels. Even after the Nazis had bombed the buildings above to rubble, the resistance fighters had been able to move unseen all over the ghetto. "We check out the empty apartment on the ground floor?"

"Soon's we clear this one."

"That's where it'll be. Easier to come and go. This one was just for emergencies." Dan turned away. "Let's go up on the roof, look for smoke. What color?"

"Green. For contrast."

Jamal appeared. "I'd like to come, too."

Dan raised his eyebrows, but nodded assent, and Driscoll led the way to the stairwell. They ascended the stairs, stepping on strands of Silly String all the way up.

They emerged into blasting sun reflected back up by the roof. The heat was withering, without any hint of a breeze. Dan turned in a circle, and noted that the building was the tallest one in the neighborhood: no windows or rooftops nearby looked down on it. A good spot for a sniper, he decided, not that the homer who'd fired on them had been doing anything but potshotting.

Jamal sat down in the scant shade of the stair head with his back against the blocks and pulled off his helmet and mask. He was a clean-cut, narrow-featured man with a stosh and short dark hair which shone with sweat. He ran his fingers through his scalp and sighed.

Dan looked down at him. "Hard day at the office?"

"Every day." Jamal turned his face to the sky, eyes closed. "Right now, two, maybe three blocks from here, a woman is being dragged into the street and getting her arms twisted for going outside with her head uncovered. Somewhere else close by, a man is getting beaten for wearing sunglasses, or for trimming his beard too close, or for the change in his pockets. What kind of world is this, that men who serve law and order wear masks, and criminals walk barefaced in the broad day?"

Dan shrugged. "Cops wear masks in Mexico and Colombia too, Asid." Surely the rooftop was private enough for the use of the man's real name, he thought.

"I think you just made my point for me, Lieutenant." Asid wiped at his forehead. "I haven't seen my wife and daughters in a month. That's the hardest thing."

"You're a brave man," Dan said, not sure why he did.

"I'm a desperate man. Every day I think about quitting, but it pays too well. My girls will want to go to college someday, if the crazies don't take over after you leave and make it against the law."

At a loss for a reply, Dan turned away and paced the roof. "Sarge. Did you pick up any brass?"

"No." Driscoll looked around. "Now you mention, they oughtta be all over the roof."

"Well, I doubt he was crawling around picking them up with a thousand bullets whizzing over his head. Where was he shooting from?"

Driscoll shrugged. "Not sure. Towards one corner or the other, I'd think. This one had a couple brain cells, he didn't stand to fire and yell 'Allah Akbar' first, the way half of em do."

Dan went to the corner nearest the intersection. He had a good view down two streets and over several nearby buildings. A narrow alley ran alongside, hidden from the intersection by the angle of the building's wall. Which building would the tunnel most likely come out under? He gauged the position of the little room below in his mind, and decided it must almost be directly under him. The tunnel would run towards the street fronting the building. He didn't see any colored smoke coming out of any windows across the way, though. He saw a glint in the corner of the roof where the low walls met, and picked up a single casing. On a hunch, he looked over the waist-high lip into the alley and saw several twinkles on the ground. "That's it. He was firing from here, and the eject mechanism spit them over the roof into the alley below." He shook his head. "They go to all this trouble to dig a network of tunnels, then toss it all away to throw thirty rounds at a passing patrol? It doesn't make any sense."

"You're talking about people who throw rocks at tanks, Skipper. There's no figuring out how they think." Driscoll leaned far over the edge, looking at the base of the building where it rose from the gravel of the alley. He stilled. "Hey."

Dan leaned over for a look. But Driscoll wasn't pointing at the alley below, but at the hidden face of the building. A series of deep notches had been dug into the mortar, creating hand- and foot-holds leading down to the alley. _So that's how he got away. He emptied his magazine on full auto and skedaddled while we were still peppering the front._ The sight of those notches made Lieutenant Grissom very uneasy, because they spoke of planning. If the man on the roof hadn't been some nitwit with an abundance of zeal…

_Bait in a trap._

Dan's heart sped up. His team would have spotted explosives inside the building, but underneath? No, that didn't play. They wouldn't have left the old woman in a building they were planning to blow up, would they? _Maybe._ Almost a third of his team was inside the apartment building, searching for the other hidden entrance. _Was the kid extra bait to lure more of my people in? No. The fear for his mother was sincere. Either the two of them are pawns, or he wasn't supposed to be there. Which means we should all have been out of here and headed back to the trucks by now._

He stepped to the front of the building. He scanned the street below, looking at the parked Humvees and the men outside them, eyes on the surrounding doors and windows and rooftops.

A wisp of green smoke drifted out from under one of the trucks.

"Get out of here!" Dan shouted down. Men looked up at him in surprise, but didn't move. "Move the trucks down the street! Now!" Marines began to pile into the vehicles, and engines whirred to life. "Move move _move-_"

The street erupted. The blast wave slapped him off his feet, and his head and shoulders smacked the roof hard enough to take the air out of him and darken his vision. A Humvee rose above the roof, tumbling, and dropped out of sight again. Driscoll threw himself over Dan as the roof tilted and plunged like the first hill of a rollercoaster, and he rode it down into darkness.

"How are you feeling, son?"

Daniel stirred. "Dad?"

"No, soldier." The voice was foghorn-deep, each word clearly enunciated, an orator's voice. "Just a figure of speech."

_Soldier? Who the hell calls a Marine 'soldier'? _Dan blinked and came into focus, mostly; his thinking seemed muzzy. It was hard to process what he was seeing: a hospital bed under him, in a room crowded with strangers mostly in uniform. The older man who stood nearest his bed wore a suit, though. Three men standing in back in casual civvie clothes carried video cameras on their shoulders, looking through the viewers.

Dan tried to sit up and got dizzy, and the room darkened and blurred.

"How are you feeling?" The man in the suit asked again.

"Like shit," he replied mushily. The room burst into laughter, startling him. That was when he noticed the IV in his arm. "What…"

The man turned to the crowd. "And _that_, gentlemen, is why we don't do these things live."

A Marine officer stepped forward. "Sorry about that, Senator. They're all pretty out of it."

"Don't give it another thought." He turned back to Dan, smiling. "You're a very lucky man. A concussion, some cuts and bruises, and that's all. They're holding you for observation, but I don't doubt you'll be up and around tomorrow."

"Sarge?"

The civvie nodded towards the other side of the bed. Dan turned his head, slowly, to keep the room from spinning, and saw Driscoll in another bed almost within reach. His left arm was cased in a cast. Eyes still closed, the man said in a tired voice, "Hey, Lieut."

"The sergeant got between you and most of what fell on you," the senator said. "But he's going to be fine too. Both of you are, thanks to this brave young man." He turned away from Dan, and Dan followed the man's attention to another bed: Jamal, out cold, with bandages wound around his chest and an IV in each arm. "He dug you out of the rubble and dragged you both to cover, all under fire. Got shot twice in the process. A real hero, and a shining example of the new Iraq."

The man seemed desperate to make three men lying in hospital beds an event worthy of public celebration, Dan thought. Then Dan remembered the streetful of men disappearing beneath him, the building collapsing with the others inside. His heart sank with the realization that the only survivors of the ambush were likely in this room.

The Senator kept talking, warming to his speech, but Dan couldn't pay attention. Something was wrong here, but Dan couldn't figure what. Asid – no, Jamal in public, can't make a slip…

Public.

Jamal's face was uncovered.

Two of the cameras had rested briefly on Jamal, then returned to the senator as he reached for Dan's hand. But the third, in the hands of a man with narrow Persian features, lingered on Jamal. The operator's eyes were dead as a shark's as he trained his camera like a gun on the interpreter's face.

"Hey!" Dan pushed aside the hand of the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "No pictures!" He tried to get out of bed. The room whirled around him, and the floor rose up to strike his knees and cheek. His IV pulled out, and shouts filled the air.

Arms under his armpits lifted him back up in bed. His gown was spotted with fresh blood. The Senator was listening to a captain, who was whispering in his ear. All three cameramen had their devices trained on the conversation. A nurse hovered over Dan, applying a pressure bandage to the ruined IV site.

The senator turned back to him, rather less friendly now. "Lieutenant, I know you've been through a lot, and I understand your concern. But, believe me, Mr. Akdhair's identity is safe with these men. They're all U.S. citizens and vetted journalists." He turned to give them a brief smile before turning back to Dan. "Trust me."

Behind the Senator, one of the men in question took a small notebook out of his pocket and jotted a brief note. Another swept the room with his camera. The Middle Eastern-looking man stood between them, staring at Dan with flat eyes.

"Take his camera," Dan said. "The video card, at least. Sir, you've got to get rid of those pictures."

"I'm sure we can trust Mr. Assad to do that, now that he understands the implications," the politician said, patting Dan's knee.

Sixteen days before Dan was due to rotate home, Asid Akdhair's wife and two teenage daughters were kidnapped. They were found two days later a hundred miles away, alive, but beaten and abused, their noses cut off as a parting insult. The interpreter was still in the hospital, but when he got the news, he discharged himself, and Dan never saw him again.


	13. Too Close for Comfort

Thursday October 6 2006

Escondido

"Okay, it's official." Roxanne stood at the door to the exercise room, watching Grunge do dumbbell curls. "I just spent ten minutes watching Anna's roast through the little window in the oven door. I am bored out of my mind."

Grunge finished up his set, then transferred the dumbbell to his other hand. "I finish this, you wanna fire up a game?"

"No. I'm sick of video games. TV, too. Web surfing, ditto. I can't even look at a screen anymore."

"There's about ten million words in print around here. Maybe-"

"I've already read everything I like. I even read my textbooks, cover to cover. I could teach the frikkin class now."

"You can't be tired of dancing."

"I can't do it fourteen hours a day." She stared out the door into the second-floor hallway. "Haven't had a cig in ten days, six hours, and thirty-nine minutes. I'm about ready to eat one. Anna won't let me smoke _anywhere_, not even in the shower with the vent on." She balled her hands into fists; she'd managed to avoid biting her nails down this time, and they made deep impressions in her palm. "I'd do anything for a smoke."

Grunge racked his dumbbell. "There might be a way."

She frowned. "A way?"

"A way to get out of the house without stepping outside."

"You lost me."

"Easier to show you. Let me shower and change. Grab your cancer sticks."

She looked down at her clothing: short cami top and mid-thigh skirt. Comfortable inside the house, but maybe a little skimpy for outdoors. It was probably near seventy outside, but the wind here could drop the chill factor twenty degrees. "Maybe I should change too?"

He looked her over in a way she wasn't accustomed to from him, the sort of appraisal she got from strange boys. Her reaction was unaccustomed, too: goosebumps popped out on her thighs and upper arms. "You're fine just like that." Then he smiled, and the Eddie she knew was back. "Very fine. I just need to get the stink off."

Half an hour later, they were in the first sublevel of the building, the one that contained the laundry room and Mr. Lynch's huge gun collection. Grunge led her to the back wall, a section of which was lined with metal shelves holding tools and other garage-style clutter.

Eddie touched one of the shelves. "You know I can sort of look through stuff by touching it. Day before yesterday, I was down here snooping around, and I found this." He reached behind the shelf and fiddled with something, then tugged on the shelving. The unit swung away from the wall like a wide door. Behind it was a concrete-lined passage, narrow enough for her to touch both walls at once. There were bulbs on the walls near the ceiling, spaced maybe fifty feet apart, providing spooky illumination. About fifty yards in, the passage jogged, taking the rest of it out of sight. She stretched a hand up and touched the cool dry ceiling, which was ribbed with reinforcements. "Where does it go?"

"To that old garage on the lot at the other end of the block." He grinned. "Out of the house and still under cover, neh?"

Roxanne looked down the passage. She'd known that Kat had left the house on some secret mission just after the lockdown; Roxy had done up her sister's face and loaned out her cigarette case and lighter as part of Kat's disguise. She'd wondered then how Kat had gotten out of the house in a way that satisfied Anna and Mr. Lynch's security concerns. "What's in there?"

"Coupla cars, is all. But I'm sure you could light up in there, and even Anna couldn't smell it." This last was delivered just above a whisper.

She grinned and started through the passage. Before she reached the jog, Eddie called, "Hang on." He pulled the rack against the door until it clicked.

"We can get back in, right?"

"No problemo. Onward."

When the jog took the beginning of the passage out of sight, Roxy got a creepy feeling. It wasn't hard to identify: even though this utilitarian little tunnel didn't look much like the sterile hallway under the Darwin complex, it was alike enough to remind her. _Haven't had a nightmare in months. I wonder if tonight's going to be the night…_

The second leg of the passage was twice as long as the first, and dead-ended at a ladder set into the wall. Looking up, she saw a trapdoor.

"Let me." Grunge scampered up the ladder and pushed up on the door, swinging it up and out of the way with a thump and disclosing an unlit space beyond. He disappeared inside, and a moment later she saw lights flicker on, revealing the garage's rough strandboard ceiling. "Come on up."

She climbed the ladder and emerged at the wall opposite the bay doors, flanked by a blue Chevy sedan and a big SUV. The walls were paneled in strandboard, too, making it airtight and soundproof. The bay doors, and the people door alongside them, were solid and blank, no windows. If she hadn't known different, she could believe they were still underground.

Eddie was peering in the window of the Chevy. "The ashtray's loaded. I think I can smell the nicotine through the glass." He turned to the SUV and put his nose to the tinted glass of the rear-door window. "This one's way roomier, but it's clean as the kitchen. Not that it matters. They're both locked up tight."

"Oh?" Roxy looked through the SUV's shotgun window at the driver's-side lock button. It popped up. "I'd just as soon smoke out here anyway."

"Then why'd you open it up?"

She smiled. "Cause, for some reason, I'm not in a hurry to have my cig anymore. Knowing I _can_ kind of blunts the urge, you know?" She opened the door and pressed the unlock button, then swung open the rear door. "Wanna just get comfy and talk for awhile?"

Boulder

Following the directions given him by Cummins when he'd delivered Ferris Mars' summons, Dan reached the door to the agent-in-charge's office, just a number on one of a row of identical doors in an untraveled corridor. He knocked, and a moment later, heard her call through the door, "Come in."

He turned the knob and stepped through. The room was surprisingly small, maybe ten by twelve, and sparsely furnished. The lady sat behind a small desk at the opposite end, her hands hidden behind her laptop. Her eyebrows lifted. "Not what you expected?"

"Well…" Compared to Director Colby's townhouse-like digs, Ferris's office was a broom closet. "It's snug."

"It's a place people don't stay any longer than they have to. Including me." She gestured to a folding chair in front of the desk. "Time enough for a fancy office when I'm too high up the company ladder to be allowed out in the field." When he was seated on the flimsy chair, she said, "Bet you're glad now we kept you out of that last fiasco."

He shifted carefully, feeling the chair's frame flex under him. "It was the right call. You couldn't have known, before you caught them."

"About that. You go home every weekend, right? To Escondido?" At his nod, she went on. "Here's the thing. You know we didn't get them all. There's still one unaccounted for."

He swallowed. "The redhead. The one impersonating the Queen of Hearts."

"Fairchild, right. If she really was an impersonator."

His chest tightened. "I thought we were sure about that."

"I was never sure about that. According to the other doubles, they all met her for the first time this gig. She didn't stay with the others or perform with them, and didn't give them any contact information. She basically revealed herself to the impostors just long enough to tell her story, and disappeared again. She's supposed to have been a stripper named Candace from Buffalo, but only one club there has a girl on the payroll by that name, and the description doesn't match. In fact, none of the clubs in Buffalo will admit to ever hiring a six-and-a-half-foot juggsy redhead."

"She said that's where she was from. Doesn't mean that's where she lives now."

"True. But she also said she sent promotional pics to other clubs, looking for a better job. We can't turn up any of those photos."

The room felt even smaller, like a cage, and warm as an oven. "So," Dan said, stepping from one syllable to the next with a hunted man's care, "which one is she?"

Ferris shrugged. "The evidence goes either way. Nothing conclusive. But _I_ think, if Lynch had found a lookalike for Fairchild, he'd have made more use of her. I'd bet big that Leni Mueller and the others met the real one. But Lynch is a sneaky bastard. He's been at least one step ahead of us for most of the last two-and-a-half years. Maybe he set things up this way to keep us chasing our tails in Escondido a little longer, while they finish digging in somewhere else. That's the official view, by the way. Which is why there's no urgency to the hunt for this 'Candy' bimbo." She drummed the desk with her fingertips. "Which, to _my_ mind, is bass-ackwards. If it was Fairchild, she's probably gone by now. But if this 'Candy' is real, she may still be in town, either warned and in hiding or abandoned in place and still performing. And I'm sure she has a story to tell us that's different from the others'." She locked eyes. "Escondido's not that big a town, and this girl is distinctive. I want you to keep an eye peeled and your ears open while you're home. She told Leni she visits parks with jogging trails. I'd like you to ask around a little on the quiet."

He swallowed without wetting his throat. "What if I find something?"

"You bring it straight to me, and I'll take it from there." She stood and offered a hand. "Welcome to the team, Agent Grissom."

He offered her what he hoped was a convincing smile. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll do my best."

She gave him an odd little smile. "I'm sure you will. But try to avoid my mistake. Don't make the job too personal."

"I'll try." An about-face brought the doorknob within reach. He opened the door and, in his haste to get out, nearly ran into Jared.

Jared looked past him into the office. "This must be the place."

"Come in, Trainee," Ferris said. "Dan, thanks again."

Dan watched the door close. _Jared goes back to Escondido on weekends too. Where is she sending him to spy?_

Escondido

"Grunge," Roxanne said breathlessly, "stop." She squirmed underneath him, pinned to the car's backseat cushions by his weight.

"'Sokay, baby," he murmured, his lips moving against the hollow of her throat and making her shiver. "I got a glove."

She shook her head, not as emphatically as she'd intended. "No."

"Don't be scared. We'll take it slow."

"No. I don't want to." She got her hands between them, flattened her palms on his massive shoulders, and pushed. She didn't move him, and hadn't expected to. She could have lifted him off her easily with her Gen, but forcing him was the last way she wanted this to go. _God's sake, take the hint._

He paused. She pushed at him again, and he lifted off her. She almost shook with relief as she sat up and slid over against the side of the car. _Safe now. I was that right about him, anyway._

He looked at her with those heart-melting chocolate eyes. "What's wrong? What did I do?"

She broke eye contact and looked away to keep from reaching for him again. "Nothing." She pulled the hem of her shirt back down to her navel and reached underneath to adjust her bra. "I just came to my senses, is all." She slid her hand inside the waist of her skirt to reach her thong and straighten it out; it had been the feel of his hands under her skirt, spreading across the bare skin of her butt as his thumbs hooked in the strings, that had abruptly cleared her mind and made her realize where they were heading, and how quickly.

The front of his sleeveless shirt was pulled up to his collarbone; she was about seventy percent sure she'd been the one who'd done it. He pulled it down and tried clumsily to tuck it into his pants in the confined space. "You drive me crazy, you know that?"

"Ditto." She sat forward and put her hands on the headrest of the seat in front of her, mostly to keep them from straying anywhere else. "Grunge, how is it you happened to bring a condom?"

He gave her a cautious look. "Comes a time it looks like the stars might line up for us, I don't want to blow it. I've been waiting for two years, Rox."

_Two years. Not three. _"Waiting for me, or waiting for your chance?" She fumbled with her cigarette case, then put it aside. "Sorry." She looked down at her feet. "Have you… been with anybody since we came to Cali? Never mind, scratch that."

"Rox…"

"Don't _even_ ask."

They sat silently for a few moments. He said, "You want to go back?"

"No. But I think I'd better."

The tunnel was just barely wide enough to walk side by side. Her breath caught as their hips bumped, and again when she felt his hand brush against hers. She reached for it, and felt it swallow hers up. A moment later, he said, "It would have been real easy to tell myself that was a token protest."

"I know." _And I know it turns some guys on when the girl struggles a little. But you're not like that. Are you?_

"Would you have stopped me?"

"I don't know. I'm just glad you stopped." A step later, she said, "Not entirely glad."

He scoffed as they approached the jog.

"It's not that I don't love you," she said, as casually as she possibly could, avoiding his eyes and straining to feel a clue in the hand gripping hers. "I just don't…"

Did she imagine it, or did his grip loosen the tiniest bit? "I know. Not husband and father material."

"Well, I'm not ready for kids either." _But I'm never going to Do It with a guy who's not willing to raise a child with me, ready or not. __No matter how many rubbers he's wearing._

They navigated the jog. Grunge stopped, bringing Roxanne to a halt as well. The door into the basement was open. He called down the passage, "Anna?"

"Who else? Did you really think I'd leave an access point to our little fortress un-monitored?" A hand appeared in the doorway, beckoning. "Come on out."

They resumed walking. Roxanne said, "We didn't go outside."

"I know that." The little homemaker-slash-assassin droid was standing beside the door with an apron covering her dress. They followed her to the laundry area. The folding table beside the dryer was loaded with warm-smelling clothes in an untidy pile. "Every door in that garage is alarmed, including the trapdoor. Believe me, I'd have been down that tunnel like a shot." She handed Grunge a basket full of folded laundry. "Yours and Bobby's. Bring it back as soon as you put your things away."

Roxanne hung back as Grunge trooped up the stairs and Anna turned to the loaded table. She joined her at the table, picked at the clothing, found a tank that belonged to her, and slowly began to fold it.

Anna said softly, "Do you need to go back for that smoke, sweetie?"

She finished the tank and reached for something else. "You have a mike in the garage, too. Don't you?"

"A deaf person would have seen the heartache in your eyes when you looked at him." She sighed. "You're both so very young, and you have so many mistakes yet to make. But you both have an uncommon amount of sense for your age. He won't say The Word, but he'd lay down his life for you. Is it enough for now?"

Friday October 7 2006

San Diego

Dan stood at the curb in front of the passenger terminal, peering down the road into the darkness beyond the lights of the buildings and trying to recognize one of the approaching cars. It was an established Friday-night routine already, and he'd gotten used to not knowing who'd come rolling up to the curb for him. But tonight he prayed that the car that came out of the darkness to meet him was his father's Jeep, or his own vehicle. _Stay sensible, Kat. Stay under cover. Because, right now, you're the absolute last person I want coming for me._

On the sidewalk a step away, Jared said, "You're looking a little anxious, buddy. Sure your ride is coming?"

"Absolutely." He kept to the very edge of the curb and made a show of looking up and down the road, so as to be as conspicuous as possible, and stayed close to Jared, to make it obvious they were together. _Why does she have to drive a car that's so damned hard to spot at night? _"Probably just caught in traffic."

"On I-15 on a Friday night?"

"It packs up sometimes when you get close to town." His father was never this late picking him up. He fought down panic and tried to think of some way to wave her off without Jared noticing.

A few minutes later, Jared said, "We could get a cab."

_A cab. _He clutched at the idea. _Get in and be gone before she gets here._ "Well…"

From the road beyond the light of the buildings, he heard the growing sound of an engine. At first he wasn't sure he recognized it: although the exhaust note was familiar, _that_ car had absolutely no business here.

A silvery shape ghosted out of the dark like a fish rising up from deep water. It became an Aston-Martin convertible with Adrienne at the wheel, her dark-blonde hair gathered up in a tail and tied with a red scarf. She rolled to a stop in front of them. "Sorry I'm late, Danny. Your father said it was just a thirty-minute trip, but he must drive like a maniac."

"Dang," Jared said softly.

"Adrienne," Dan said, "This is Jared, a friend from work."

She smiled up at the dumbstruck Marine. "Another 'security consultant', I suppose?" She reached over and opened the passenger door. "You need a ride, Jared? The back seats are pretty cramped, but you're welcome."

Jared eased into the rear bucket, knees bumping the seat in front. "Just to the Alamo lot, thanks."

At the rental lot, Dan followed his associate to the door of the building. "You only live four miles from my house, Jared."

"I got someplace else to go."

"Uh huh."

"Seriously. Besides, three's a crowd."

"Jared, we're not dating. We're just…"

"Friends?"

"Hell, I don't know. But we're not like that. We just talk."

Jared grasped him by the shoulders and turned him back towards the idling car. "So, go talk."

-0-

Jared watched the fancy ragtop disappear into the dark, a grin on his face. _Lousy wives, great girlfriends, eh, 'Danny'? No wonder you were so nervous when I followed you to the curb. And now I know why you don't spend time with any women at Central._ He turned to the rental building. _I should have guessed. He acts like he's got a lady, but the only picture he takes out of his wallet to show off is his ex's. What else could it have meant?_

Jared decided to just call his girlfriend tonight and see her the next day. Tonight, he'd drop in at Arena's, and maybe pick up a little gossip.

-0-

As soon as the lights of the rental lot were behind them, Adrienne said, "I never saw this coming either, believe me."

"What's going on? Where's Dad?"

"At home – your house, that is – with Drew. It's a long story."

"We've got time."

"I know. I just wanted to be sure you did, too, so you wouldn't rush me through it." She tugged at her scarf until it came loose, freeing her hair to drift in the gentle breeze coming over the windshield. It occurred to Dan that this was the precise scene he often imagined during their late-night conversations: sitting beside her as she tooled down the dark highway, her hair floating around her like a banner. "I ran into Andy at the playground today. No fireworks; it was bound to happen, and I was ready for it. But he was surprisingly cordial. I suppose he didn't want to start a scene in front of the girl watching the kids." The corners of her mouth lifted. "Another surprise. He was the stereotype sweet old man and a perfect doting grandpa. He knows all the kids on the playground by name, did you know that? Anyway, we basically ignored each other, taking turns with Drew and the supervisor until the kids went in. Then we said a polite goodbye.

"He called me four hours later. I didn't even know he had my number. Drew came home early, with a fever."

"Is he okay?"

"He will be. The girl watching the playground this morning told me there's a forty-eight hour thing running through the school. He's pretty low right now, but he should be risking his life on the swing again by the time you leave for Boulder." She accelerated smoothly up the ramp and merged with expressway traffic. The increased speed brought just enough wind over the front glass to pull her hair into her face. "Damn it. Should never have untied it."

"Here." He removed the scarf from the center console where she'd dropped it. He gathered her hair up, the feel of it in his fingers both pleasantly familiar and strange, as was the warmth of her neck against his knuckles. He hurriedly wound the scarf around the tail and knotted it with a quick pull.

"Ow," she said.

"Sorry."

The corner of her mouth turned up briefly. "Guess I'm not used to you pulling my hair anymore."

That brought a touch of warmth to his ears. He settled back in the seat and let the breeze wash over him. "So, my dad called and asked you to pick me up?"

"Not quite. He called and asked me to come take a look at Drew. Well, maybe 'ask' isn't the right word. I'm sure he would have choked if he had. He told me he was thinking of taking Drew to the emergency room. I'd bet anything he called your nanny first, but she's still hunkered down, and couldn't come. Your mother is two states away. I'm sure I was his last choice, but he was in a panic. I rushed over with juice and a bottle of children's aspirin and held Drew till it kicked in and he fell asleep.

"Andy offered me dinner, just to be polite, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline when I accepted. We ate and made very neutral conversation for the longest hour of my life. Then he told me you were due to land at the airport soon, but he'd rather not take Drew out again. I knew better than to suggest he leave Drew with me. So I offered to bring you home, and he pretended to think it over before he accepted." She shook her head, scenting the passenger compartment with her perfume. "It could almost be funny."

As they approached the exit for Escondido, she said, "You don't know where she lives either, do you?"

He stared out the window. "No."

After a moment of silence, she said, "Business security is one thing, but this is insane. You can't go on like this. Is it ever going to end?"

"Someday, maybe. Can we talk about something else?"

"Sorry. You two seem so good together. It's just that you're almost never together." She stared out at the road. "Reminds me of us, back in the day."

Dan's house was lit as if for a party. Not only were the front door and driveway lights on, the front curtains were all pulled wide, and the brightly-illuminated living room spilled light onto the lawn and sidewalk. No one looking for _this_ house tonight was going to miss it in the dark. Apparently his father had forgotten that his driver had lived in it for years.

Adrienne pulled in behind his father's Jeep. Dan reached for the door handle, and was surprised when the Aston's motor shut off. "You're coming in?"

"I want to check on Drew before I leave."

His father met them at the door. He nodded at Adrienne and said to Dan, "He's still sleeping. The fever's down, I think. I'll make an appointment with the pediatrician Monday, just in case."

Adrienne gave Dan an indulgent smile. "Whatever you think is best."

In Drew's room, a night light washed the wall behind the nightstand and gave the three of them just enough light to avoid stumbling over toys. Dan and his father stood by the bed, watching Adrienne attend to her child. She brought the inside of her wrist, feather-light, to the boy's forehead. She drew the covers up over his chest, leaving his arms outside, and fussed with his pillows. She looked around on the floor, obviously searching for something, until she found an eight-inch plastic action figure dressed as a futurific soldier. She placed it between the sleeping child's arm and side, touched her lips to his forehead, and hurried out. Dan looked from the door to his father.

"She always took good care of him," his father said. "She just never took good care of you." He went out.

Dan gazed down on his sleeping son. The toy in the boy's loose embrace caught his eye. It was one of several very like it on the bedroom floor. He would never have guessed that this one was his son's favorite. But Adrienne knew.

He turned to leave, and paused with his hand on the knob at the sound of his wife's voice in the living room.

"I didn't keep him from you, Andy. I would never have used him as a bargaining counter or a pawn in some chess match between us. I'd have sent him with you anytime you liked. But you didn't have time for kids when he was born, any more than you did for your own when they were little."

_Uh oh_, Dan thought, _looks like the truce is over._

Keys jingled: hers, Dan presumed, since his dad owned four keys and didn't collect them on a ring. "You're different now, Andy. I like the change. Retirement agrees with you. It's turning you back into a human being. Thanks again for dinner, by the way. I had no idea you could cook."

_Or maybe not._

His father said, "It's a new skill. I've got a pretty good teacher."

"Hmp. You be very careful with that one, Andy, and not just because she's all sharp edges on the inside. Her husband may seem open-minded, but I get the impression he's open like a set bear trap. You send her home in tears, it's going to cost you."

"Dan told me you moved," Andy Grissom said, pointedly changing the subject.

"I've got a rental in a one-stoplight town halfway between here and Temecula. It's nothing much, but it's clean and cheap and close to the club."

"Oh?" His father's tone made it clear Adrienne's work wasn't his favorite topic of conversation. "You're not at that place in San Diego anymore?"

"Danny didn't tell you? I'm starting my own place in Temecula."

"Is that so?" A pause. "You'll be the headliner, I suppose."

"God, no. That place opens its doors, my costume will be a business suit. I'm done stripping."

"Well, damn," the man said in a confused tone. Then he gathered his wits and said, "You've taken a step up, anyway."

"I suppose you think it's about as prestigious as becoming a whorehouse madam, but it's something I've been working towards for a long time."

"I didn't think you'd ever want to quit."

"Maybe I don't. But stripping isn't something you can do till you apply for Social Security, is it? Better to get out at the top of my game, while my reputation will still draw customers to my club."

"I'm… glad for you, Adrienne. I really hope it takes off."

"Well, thank you." She jingled her keys again. "I wanted to say goodbye to Danny, but it doesn't look like he's coming out for awhile."

Dan turned the knob and stepped through the doorway. His wife and his father were standing between living room and foyer. She said, "Danny, before I go. The Tylenol should wear off about four, but if the fever's really broken, he'll sleep through the night. If not, just give him two more with a little OJ and he'll go right back to sleep. Fevers really take it out of them."

"Okay," he said. "Thanks for everything, Ren."

She nodded and went out the door.

As soon as it snicked shut, his dad turned to him. "'Ren'?"

"We're getting along better, now that I'm back and easier to contact. And we're not sharing a house."

His dad scoffed. "She says she's got her own club. Is that on the level?"

Dan felt an unaccustomed irritation with his father. "What do you mean? Of course it is. What, you think she's making it up?"

"Just wondering where she'd get the money." _And what she did for it_, he didn't have to say.

"Why would she have a _bit_ of trouble finding investors? It's a profitable business if you know how, and you can bet she does. She probably has more money in the bank than you do." _Thanks in part to me not letting her share any of her income with her family._ He looked past his father, through the living room, and into the dining room, and fastened his eye on Adrienne's artwork border. "She's not some brainless bimbo, Dad. She didn't get into this because it's easy money, or because she couldn't find anything better. There were other things she could have done, other things she's good at. She chose this." And it finally hit him: the men she danced for didn't matter, because they were strangers and they were paying to see, using what they saw as a foundation for their fantasies, not caring what truly lay under the skin of their fantasy girl. She gave them what they paid for, and fueled their fantasies, and never offered the real Adrienne to them. The painted border was more of Adrienne than any of them had ever had of her.

"Well," his father said. "I thought we were done fighting over her a long time ago." He reached into his pocket.

"I just think maybe it's time she got her due, that's all."

His father produced a single key, the one to his Jeep. "I think it's time to head home. Call if you need anything, son."

After the sound of his father's vehicle faded away, Dan turned around in his silent house. He went into the kitchen with some vague notion of checking for dirty dishes, but his father had cleaned up after fixing dinner. He looked in the fridge: a few leftovers, butter, milk. It looked sort of forlorn. He closed the door.

He looked at his watch: just before ten. He decided not to risk waking Kat with a phone call. He thought about taking a shower and calling it a night. Instead, he turned on his cellphone and tapped out Adrienne's number.

"_Danny?_"

"Hi. You almost home?"

"_Actually, I'm only three blocks away. The pump light came on a block from the house, so I filled up at this old service station that turned its bays into a little grocery. I went inside to pay and maybe grab a drink for the ride home, and made a discovery. The place actually has a decent little wine selection. I picked out a nice Chardonnay to take home. I'm just getting back in my car._" He heard the dashboard chime cut off as the door thunked shut.

"Really." His chest tightened. "Listen. Dad's gone, it's just me and Drew now. It's early for you, right? You want to come back for coffee?" He added, "We could talk."

"_We talk every night._" But he could hear the smile in her voice, and he smiled into the phone too.

"Yeah," he said, "but this would be face-to-face. Up close and personal."

"_Hm. Up close and personal. That does sound different._" A pause, while the engine caught and revved. "_See you in five._"

San Diego

Arena's was just as packed as it had been on Amateur Night, but with a slightly different crowd. The chained-off parking area for ladies was much smaller, and almost the only females in the place were working. Jared paid his cover and wormed his way to the bar, by turns sliding up against expensive jackets, silk shirts, nylon windbreakers, T-shirts, and bare womanflesh. He reached between two seated patrons with a ten in his hand and held it up until he got the attention of the bartender.

"Heineken," he ordered. Not his usual 'party' brew, but the Dutch import was what he drank whenever he firmly resolved to stop at one. The earthy, bitter stuff was alien to his palate, and he drank it a sip at a time, almost forcing it down. It would probably take him an hour to finish it, and he'd be able to drive home knowing he was under the legal limit.

Beer in hand, he wandered the floor, watching the girls with appreciation but looking without much hope for one in particular. After a while, he returned to the bar, just as one of the stools opened up. He slid onto it. "Busy," he said to the bartender.

"Typical Friday," the man said as he rinsed glasses.

"Adrienne's night off?"

"She doesn't work here anymore. Got her own place, I hear." He moved off.

The barfly next to him said, "Not falling in love, are you, man?"

He hoisted his Heineken. "Just curious."

"Ain't we all."

After a swig of his beer, he asked, "You come out here on Sundays?"

The man, in his early thirties and already balding, grinned. "Amateur Night? Every chance I get. Sometimes you find a real diamond in the rough."

"Remember a little black-haired chick, slim, danced in her street clothes?" He drew his thumb and forefinger down along his face. "With purple streaks? Maybe three-four weeks ago."

"Oh, _hell_ yeah. The crowd was howling when she stepped off."

"Won, huh?"

"Uh uh. Would have, but she left early."

Jared raised his eyebrows. "She been in since?"

"Nope. None of the others, either."

"Others?"

"The three chicks she came in with. You didn't see em?" The man grinned. "_Baby._"

_Four girls? _"Nice, huh? What did they look like?"

"_Hot_. Like, singe your fingers. All old girlfriends of Adrienne's, strippers from Toronto. Probably dancing at her new club now." The man took a hit off his Michelob. "'S why she couldn't take the money. Shouldn't have been up on stage at all, but you could tell she was having fun, showing the rookies how it's done."

_Toronto. That would explain why she only showed up a few times a year_, he thought. "Where's this new club at?"

"Not sure. North, but not as far as L.A." He smiled again. "Need to take a ride up that way."

Jared slid a hand into his jacket pocket and touched the picture there, a copy of the photo the Queen of Hearts' card had been made from. "Bet you know all the girls who work here."

"Not as well as I'd like, but yeah."

"How about if a girl came in here looking for work? Would you recognize her?"

"Maybe. They audition new girls after hours, but if one came in to apply…" He looked behind Jared and froze.

A voice behind Jared said, "Help you, Officer?"

Jared turned. A big bruiser with _security_ written all over him stood behind his stool, looking unfriendly. "I'm not a cop, buddy."

"Uh huh," the man said, skeptically. "Private, then. Who you working for?"

"No. I'm not a stalker or anything, either, okay?"

"What's the interest in Adrienne?"

"Just making conversation. I met Adrienne outside the club. I'm a friend of her ex."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Her ex doesn't have any friends here."

Jared stood up and matched the bouncer's stare, eye to eye. "He's got one."

Another barkeep, not the one who'd filled Jared's order, drifted their way. He reached under the bar. "Trouble, Tony?"

"That depends on him. What are you here for? Trying to dig up some more dirt on her for him? Hasn't he done enough to her?"

Jared said, "Don't know what you think he's done to her, but I'd say you're a little less forgiving than she is. She picked him up at the airport tonight."

"Bullshit."

Jared shook his head. "I was there. She came rolling up in her James Bond convertible, apologized for being late, and drove off with him. They looked real comfortable together."

The man studied Jared's face for a moment. "Son of a bitch. When did _that_ happen?"

Jared shrugged. "Sometimes a couple learns to get along better after a divorce. Fall in love again, even. Not often, but it happens."

Escondido

Dan leaned over the bathroom sink, wearing only a pair of boxers riding crooked on his hips. The taps were on, sending a stream of hot water into the sink. He stared sullenly through the rising steam at his dripping reflection. _Dan Grissom, you utter, total, fucking asshole._ He splashed some more hot water on his face, ran his wet hands through his hair, turned off the taps, and left the room without turning off the light.

In the adjoining bedroom, he found Adrienne awake and sitting up in bed. She had the sheet pulled up to her collarbone, but she'd tucked it tight around her hips and under her arms; the way the silky fabric molded itself to her body made it obvious she was naked underneath. She studied him as he picked his pants off the floor on the way to the bed. "Danny, it just happened. It doesn't mean it's ever going to happen again."

He made no comment, just sat on the opposite side of the bed, his back to her, and leaned over to pick up his socks.

"Caitlin's not quite the innocent she seems, you know. You can tell her. She won't be crushed. She'll forgive you." The sheets made a soft slithery sound as she rolled his way. "She might slap your face first, just on impulse."

_If she slaps my face on impulse, my head will separate from my body like a golf ball from a tee and go whizzing across the room. Or would it be more like smacking a watermelon with a ball bat?_ "Yeah, and I'm sure she'd be sorry afterward. You want a shower?"

"I - Yes. Then I need to go, before Drew wakes up." He felt her tugging at the sheet, freeing it from the foot of the bed. Then the mattress under him shifted as she rolled away and put her feet on the floor. A moment later her sheet-wrapped form passed by, headed for the bathroom; half the shining fabric trailed behind her on the floor like some fabulous gown. It occurred to him that she'd picked out and bought the bed linens; the bed too. She'd slept in it fifty nights for every one he'd spent there. In a sense, he'd come to her bed, not she to his. Somehow that made him feel even dirtier. So did her quick over-the-shoulder glance that caught him watching her rear end as she walked by.

He heard the bathroom door snick shut, and the water came on, sounding rather more muffled than he remembered. _Of course. She never used to shut the door when she showered, if Drew was asleep or gone._ She might be using his shower, but the standing invitation to join her was withdrawn. He felt relieved and saddened at the same time. He picked up the rest of his clothes from the scatter of garments on the bedroom floor and began to dress.

Once he was presentable, he headed for the living room. Only the glow from the streetlight coming through the foyer window and an under-cabinet light from the kitchen illuminated it; it was still an hour or so before dawn. Adrienne's shoes were on the floor at the end of the couch, and her jacket was draped across one arm. Aside from those items, there wasn't much to pick up: just the wine bottle and two glasses. He would have liked to blame their present circumstances on the wine, but the bottle and glasses were all half-full; they'd barely touched it before…

_Admit it. You knew she was spending the night the moment you pulled the cork._

He'd suggested a little TV, and dimmed the lights for viewing, but, once they'd settled into the couch and started talking, they'd never gotten around to turning it on. Like the little incident with her hair, sharing a couch with Adrienne and talking together had been a weird mixture of the familiar and strange. It was something he'd done often, or so he told himself, but he couldn't remember it ever having been like this. The last time seemed so far in the past that his memory might have been playing tricks. Even though he knew every expression and tilt of her head as she talked, somehow it almost felt like a first date as well: the hesitancy, the feeling of exploration – and, looking back on it, the undercurrent of anticipation. They'd smiled into each other's eyes as they'd tipped their glasses.

They'd talked a lot about old times: the good stuff, not the fighting. He'd been surprised how much of it there was, once she'd begun reminding him, and before long he was bringing up as many good memories as she. Their voices had lowered and softened as the time had gone by, and the recollections had become more intimate. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, they'd closed the gap between them on the couch until they were almost touching hips. His arm had come to rest on the back of the couch behind her head, feeling as if it belonged nowhere else. He'd said something half-assed clever, and she'd laughed and rested her head on his shoulder.

At her touch, all the isolation and loneliness he'd endured since his return from overseas had risen up like a flood. It seemed as if all the time without her had been hollow and colorless. Even his weekends home had seemed like waiting in the trenches for the next assault. The time he'd spent with Kat felt less like a date than a meeting of conspirators, and IO propaganda had had him looking at her like a possible double agent – a shameful lack of trust from a lover, he thought, that made him question his feelings for her. _What am I even doing with her?_

There had been a time when he'd questioned his attraction to Caitlin, suspecting it was all 'allure', that weird emotional imperative generated by her power. But now, he felt a sudden suspicion that the real answer to that question was sitting beside him. Had he fastened onto a beautiful younger woman to prove something to his estranged wife? And, if so, what did it mean about how he felt towards Adrienne?

Adrienne's good humor had faded into a sort of watchfulness as she'd seemed to sense a change in his thoughts – but still resting her head on his shoulder, waiting, offering him trust he no longer deserved from her. The sight and smell and feel of her had filled him with longing and carried him off. He'd looked down into his wife's eyes, which had widened irresistibly as she'd recognized what she saw in his, and gathered her up into his arms. Allure be damned; he was certain he had never wanted a woman more in his whole life.

But now the heat of the last few hours had cooled to remorse. It did no good to tell himself that he and Kat hadn't made any formal commitment; the risks they were taking to see each other was proof of commitment enough.

He flipped on a few lights, banishing the twilight. He poured the wine down the kitchen sink and rinsed the glasses, deep in thought. It seemed clear to him from the way she'd covered up that Adrienne was ready to dismiss this and move on. When he and she had been truly married, showing herself to him in private had been a first act of sharing all. But last night hadn't been a return to that intimacy; her modesty the next morning was proof she thought that what they'd done the night before had contained no promise for the future.

He turned down the hall to the bedroom. It seemed he'd been in the living room only a couple of minutes, so he was sure Adrienne was still in the shower. He'd gather up her clothes for her, he thought, and hasten her departure.

He opened the door and beheld his wife, damp-haired and naked, turning her shirt right-side-out. Her eyes widened and she snatched it up to hold in front of her. It scarcely covered her breasts and crotch, leaving arms, shoulders, hips and legs bare. He mentally shook himself and backed out of the room, closing the door. "Sorry."

"I suppose you think that little panic was ridiculous three different ways," she said through the door. He heard a small rustling sound he couldn't identify. "I mean, even if we'd only met tonight, and I was a librarian, modesty should be out the window now, right? But we didn't just meet tonight, did we? And I'm _so_ not a librarian." More rustling. "I mean, it's how I make my living. What right have I to modesty with anyone, much less you?"

"I wasn't thinking anything like that," he said.

"Oh?"

"I was thinking you were beautiful, and I just didn't want to look away."

A moment of silence. He could hear her sigh through the door. "I'm so sorry about this."

Confused, he said, "This isn't your fault."

"I know. I'm not sorry for Kat. Well, I am, but she'll get over this. I'm feeling sorry for myself." Her voice was lower and clearer; Dan was sure she was right next to the door. "When I met you, I'd never done a one-night stand, Danny. I never dated customers either. Most of us don't; it's a survival strategy. When I told the girls in the dressing room I'd said yes to a date from you, the cocky Marine with the gorgeous eyes and the killer smile, they said I was insane. But I thought you were special the first time I talked to you.

"When you didn't call after our first night together, I cried like a little kid. After a few days, I decided I'd been played by the best, and chalked it up to experience. Then when you finally called, sounding like a teenager asking the new girl in school for a date, I knew I'd been right about you."

The door rattled softly in its stops, and Dan knew she was leaning against it. "God. I thought I was doing so well. I was done being angry, and I could be around you without my heart sinking to my knees. I could sit across a table from you and look into your eyes without reaching for your hand. Even when I was laying hands on you at the playground, all I felt was a warm little tingle. I was in recovery. Now I've relapsed, and I have to start all over again."

If the door hadn't been between them, he was sure he would have reached for her. Instead, he said, "The papers. Where are they?"

Silence on the other side of the door. "I have them at home. I just haven't brought them. It seemed so much more urgent when I was angry at you."

"Bring them today, when you come to see Drew, and I'll sign them."

"Danny. Please don't be angry. We've been angry so much."

"I'm not, Ren."_Quit each other cold turkey. It's the only way. Stop calling her at night. No more little messages in the mornings. Only see her when she comes for Drew. No more little faux-family get-togethers. Keep it polite and distant and friendly. _"It's just something we have to do."

More silence. "All right." The door opened. She was dressed except for her shoes and jacket. Unsmiling, she said, "Friends?"

He nodded, unable to speak.

She paused at the door to Drew's room. She glanced at him, then eased the door open a crack, looked inside for a few moments, then quietly shut it. "Still out."

"Cup of coffee, before you go?" He cursed himself. _Letting go isn't going to be easy, is it?_

She hesitated. "No. Thanks." She bent to slip on her shoes, and he held his breath as her jeans stretched across her thighs and her hair fell down. She picked her jacket off the arm of the couch. He resisted the urge to hold it for her, but couldn't help watching her shrug into it. She noticed, and turned part away as she adjusted it on her shoulders. "Danny. You said we were still friends. Take some friendly advice. Don't sign the papers before you tell Kat what happened. Then tell her you're going to do it, then do it and tell her." She picked up her purse. "Way better than telling her you signed them the same time you tell her you were with me. It sends mixed messages. But if you do it after, you're making her a pledge and keeping it. It'll go a long way towards restoring her faith in your commitment."

He thought about it a moment, and nodded. "That makes sense." _But am I agreeing because it's really right, or because it put things off a little longer?_

Adrienne passed by, turning slightly to avoid brushing against him, and paused at the door. "I can't believe this."

Dan's chest felt almost too tight to talk. "That you're still trying to put us together?"

"No." She pulled the door open. "How bad I want to kiss you good-bye."

26


	14. Girls Are Full of Surprises

Monday Oct 9 2006  
Covington, Upper Peninsula, Michigan

The 'cabin' used by Andy Grissom and his companions for their regular hunting trip was anything but rustic. It belonged to an old Team Four buddy who'd advanced to a senior position in IO's Personnel Division, and it was everything one might expect of the vacation-getaway home of a single man with an eight-figure income. The five thousand square foot structure, situated on a ridge overlooking Worm Lake, had six bedrooms and three baths, Jacuzzi and sauna, a kitchen with professional furnishings, and a great room with a twenty-foot ceiling. One wall of the big room was dominated by a huge stone fireplace; another was made of triple-pane glass giving a view – on clear days – down the wooded slope to the lake below. The TV area, with its three couches and six-foot flatscreen, barely took a bite out of the room's two thousand square feet of floor space; neither did the two pool tables, or the six-seat bar area. There was plenty of room for a couple of card tables, which were set up and occupied.

The friends spent almost all their time on these 'hunting' trips indoors; for the next five days they would mostly eat and drink, talk, play games, and watch TV. Although they'd all brought guns, the only use the weapons were likely to get was on the practice targets just outside. After a man has hunted quarry that shoots back, he often loses interest in prey animals. Besides, Andy thought, they were all getting kind of old to be tramping through the woods with two feet of snow on the ground and the temp hovering in the low teens.

Andy and Mike Diehl, their host, played pool while their friends played cards and drank. Not all of the group drank alcoholic beverages; Mike, for one, had gone on the wagon years before, though he always stocked the fridge and liquor cabinet with his friends' favorites and sent them home with whatever was left. A couple of Mike's guests simply didn't want to get so early a start on their week-long party. But everyone had a glass or can or bottle near at hand, whether their choice was Smirnoff, Molson or Gatorade.

"Hey, Mike," one of the men at the tables called. "What's the weather supposed to be like tomorrow?"

Another spread his handful of cards in a fan and stared at it. "More snow. My knees can predict it better than the frickin National Weather Service."

Mike bent over the table to take his shot. "Maybe six inches tomorrow. The TV weather guy was almost embarrassed to mention it. By January, that hardly counts as a flurry around here."

Andy watched his friend stroke his third solid into a corner pocket and said, "Take a little walk before it gets dark? I could use some air."

"Sure," Mike said, eye on the cue ball. He stroked it into another solid, which missed its intended pocket. Andy took over and dropped in a stripe before missing. Eventually the game was over, and the two men donned coats and stepped outside.

While the snow lay deep in the woods all around, a broad area around the house was paved and plowed, including a wide drive and several parking spaces. Feet crunching in the thin drifts, breath forming clouds in the still cold air, the two men strolled toward the parking area. When they were around the corner from the big windows, Andy reached into his pocket and drew out the scrambler. "Meant to get this back to you sooner."

Diehl glanced at the TV-remote-sized device, then slipped it into his pocket. "Like I said, no hurry. These things don't get taken out of the armory often. Didn't use it on anything that's gonna make headlines, I hope."

"Nothing like."

"No trouble with it? It's not much like the one you asked for. I didn't even know we made a rifle version."

"It was easy enough to figure out. I think the one I used was a prototype; it was a long time ago."

The man looked off into the woods, avoiding Andy's eyes. "Can you tell me about it?"

All the men on this vacation trip were veterans of IO's Expeditionary Teams. The others in their party had moved from field work to administrative or training duties years before,while Andy had been inexplicably retained in the field. Mike Diehl, IO's Director of Personnel and an old friend from Andy's Team Four days, had looked with skepticism on Andy's 'retirement', certain that IO would never let go of a man with Andrew Grissom's talent over a heart murmur; Mike believed that the Shop still called on him for odd jobs that required a greater-than-normal degree of deniability. Andy had found that mistaken assumption useful: Mike had shared information with him that even the old friends at the card table would never be privy to. "Special project," Andy said."SPT."

Mike nodded and asked no more. 'Surgical personal targeting' was a Shop buzz-phrase for assassination; the Personnel chief wouldn't ask his friend to divulge information that might incriminate him. And the excuse was even true, in a way; targeting couldn't get any more personal than pointing a weapon at someone's head. Not that Andrew Grissom would ever have stood trial for killing Annie, of course, whether in the lab or the daycare's playground. He felt uncomfortable, but not from the cold.

Mike looked at him with sympathetic eyes. "You okay?"

"Just thinking all the ways that one could have gone bad."

The other man nodded. "I saw your boy at Central. Looks like he's doing well. They'll be putting him in the field soon, I think." The IO officer looked at him keenly. "You know what he's doing."

Andy nodded. "I know about Special Security, Mike. And who he's detailed to."

Mike Diehl showed no surprise at his 'retired' friend's knowledge of classified info, but he didn't ask if Dan had told him. "Yeah. They did a crap job keeping Chula Vista under wraps, didn't they? Not that I have a clue how they could have done better."

Andy looked away to hide his surprise. "Yeah." All he knew about events at Chula Vista was the story he'd heard on the news last April: that a freak storm, a one-of-a-kind atmospheric anomaly, had smashed an industrial park at the eastern edge of town. By coincidence, the park had been shut down for the day so that some HRT types could practice urban scenarios. The storm had hit with the suddenness and power of an artillery barrage, and flying debris had injured or killed a great many of the troopers. For security reasons, no names had been given, either of the dead and injured or of the organization they'd been part of. Weather experts were offering a number of theories about the origin of the storm, and the global warming debate had been a little louder for a while before it all faded from the public consciousness. Now, suddenly, Andy knew all that was bullshit. Chula Vista had been a battleground, IO against Gens, and IO had been handed their asses. And people like his son had been killed. "Was it all Lynch's people?"

"Looks like, except for the little blonde. We're not sure where she came from."

_Little blonde?_ Of course, Annie wouldn't have let her kids walk into danger unescorted. The Chula Vista business had come right on the heels of Westminster Mall, and had quickly crowded it off the front pages. _Just one more little thing she forgot to tell me about._"I thought they established her as part of the group."

"Not the same girl. At least, we don't think so."

Again, Andy felt a chill that didn't come from the winter air. "Describe her."

Mike looked at him carefully."Five-one to five-three, a buck to a buck twenty. Honey blonde, waist length, worn in a braid."

"_How often have you looked at these pictures without noticing the hair?" _The chill deepened. _She told me the one I saw in the photos was destroyed. Do they all look alike, then? Except for Annie, because she was refurbished? _"She kill anybody?"

"One, for sure. Put her fist into his sinus cavity, right through his bulletproof face shield. And she's the one beat Colby to pulp. For fun." He paused. "Oh. Cracker accent. Could be fake, I suppose."

"Eye color?" The grinning monster in the photograph had had Annie's eyes.

"Really think anybody who got that close had other things on his mind at the time." Mike's eyes were locked on him. "What do you know, Griss?"

Andy didn't like misleading his old friend, a man who'd seen him at his worst and probably saved his life more than once. It was his first taste of the bitter brew his son had been sampling since beginning training at Central. He shook his head. "Nothing solid. But I've been picking up little bits for a long time."

"Like?"

"Like, Westminster Mall wasn't the first time one of them popped up on the radar." He decided to reveal a little information, both as proof he was also an insider and as an investment towards further trust. "You remember that little party just before the balloon went up in 'Ninety?"

Mike's head bobbed, and a puff of mist came from his nostrils. "I still dream about it, man. You?"

He nodded. "Burt ever talk about it? The insertion, especially?" Andy watched Mike's expression change as he got it. Burt, one of the guests back in the house, was a former Team Six member whose people had flown into Iraq with five masked strangers in the opposite seat. "I've got no proof. But I think the five guys who blew the reactor were five girls."

"Fuck. We've been _working_ with them?"

"Maybe just that one time. But it means that somebody making decisions high up knew about them and could talk them into a big favor."

"Craven," Mike said. "Had to be. Now he's gone, and they want to take IO down brick by brick. He must have fucked them over good."

Andy puffed out a white cloud. "Lynch and his bunch start taking things personal, it could get very hairy for our people in the field." _Especially for the ones working for the other side, if IO finds out about us…_

Diehl dropped a hand on his shoulder. "We'll be better prepared next time, Griss. That's what the buildup on the Lynch team is about."

_And maybe they'll be better prepared too._

-0-

Andrew felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking it. "C'mon, Griss," Mike said. "Up and at em."

He opened his eyes. His friend was dressed for outdoors and carrying a rifle. "What the hell, Mike?"

"Just got a call. We're back on the clock."

"I'm retired."

"Not tonight. Shake it. The others are already gone."

He threw off the covers. "What time is it?"

"About midnight."

"What kind of job does IO have for a bunch of desk jockeys out in the boonies in the middle of the night?"

"It's not exactly an op. Just a little chore that's come up, and we're handy." Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "Turns out the Shop has a research facility close by. Some big secret. Bet your ass _I _didn't know, or I'd never have built here. A bunch of lab animals got loose, and they want us to hunt them down quick."

Suddenly Andy realized he was dressed. Had he just managed to throw his clothes on still half-asleep, or … had he gone to bed with his clothes on, and only just noticed? Everything felt oddly unreal – probably from having been wakened suddenly into this unexpected situation.

Diehl led the way through the great room, which was dim and quiet. The fire was burned down to embers. The billiard table had most of its balls still on the felt, and two cues lay across the rails. At the card tables, hands lay facedown, and half-finished drinks sat at every place. It gave Andy an eerie feeling, as if the big house was inhabited by ghosts.

Something else about the scene bothered him: the apparent suddenness of his friends' departure. "How long have they been gone?"

Diehl offered Andy a heavy coat from the hall closet; he was already wearing one. Had he had it on when he'd shaken Andy awake? He couldn't remember. "Hour, maybe. I'd have let you sleep through, but I want to check on them, and I might need some help. Nobody's answering the phone."

Andy paused halfway into the coat. "Trouble?"

"Not likely. Reception's for shit around here. Even sat phones don't work half the time."

_How can that be? Satellite phones are supposed to work anywhere. Unless…_Something niggled at the back of Andy's mind, but Diehl turned to the door leading to the attached garage, and the thought slipped away as Andy followed.

The headlights of Diehl's four-wheel-drive illuminated a narrow snow-drifted road pressed close by evergreens. The snow glowed in the light, making the sky appear black. The vehicle was parked on the shoulder, engine idling. Andy blinked. "How long have we been on the road?"

"Just a few minutes. Like I said, it's close. You fall back asleep?"

"Guess I must have."

"Well, the cold air will wake you up." Diehl killed the lights and shut off the motor. "Let's go."

The air bit at him when he opened the door; he figured the temp must be in the single digits. Andy looked up and down the road: only their own tires had marked it. "Is this where the rest of them are supposed to be?"

"Hereabout." Diehl handed him the rifle. "We're going in by a different route. Shorter." He led the way into the trees.

Andy's booted feet sank to his calves at every step. His night vision adjusted quickly, but he still felt blind as he crunched his way through the trees behind his former squadmate. The snow seemed to radiate a pale ghostly luminance like reflected moonlight, though the sky overhead was black and starless. It provided plenty of light to walk by, but the woods surrounding him remained dark, and he couldn't make out anything more than ten steps in any direction. Ahead, Diehl's legs were backlighted by the snow, but his upper body faded into shadow against the deeper dark of the trees.

Although Andy was full of questions, he felt strangely reluctant to ask them. There was a great deal he hadn't been told, and he knew the missing information was important, but he felt a weird compulsion to simply trust his friend and let events unfold –throwback to training, maybe? He listened hard, but there were no sounds not of their making. He wondered again at their prospects for catching a bunch of rats or chimpanzees or whatever; unless the area was solidly fenced in, such a hunt was sheer waste of time. Then he saw his breath in the air, and was reminded of the cold. "Mike," he said in a low voice, "what kind of animals are we looking for?"

"You'll know them when you see them, Griss. I think first we'll find the others, then we'll-" He stopped. "Bingo." Diehl abruptly changed direction, and a moment later, Andy saw why: they'd crossed the tracks of another hunter, and Diehl was now following them.

The woods around them changed. The men were still surrounded by evergreens, but now interspersed among the Christmas-tree spruces were trees with large bare trunks and thick reaching branches sporting clusters of needles instead of leaves. Something about them arching overhead gave Andy a sense of foreboding.

A shot sounded, faint with distance but clear in the still cold air. Two more followed rapidly. Andy said, "We're not trying to capture them."

"No. They're more dangerous than they look, Griss. Way more Quick containment is top priority." Mike slowed, studying the ground. Andy studied the deep tracks as well, trying to see to the shadowed bottom where the footprints were: something about them didn't seem right. But it didn't come to him before Mike said, "Here," and Andy saw that the trail ended at the base of one of the tree trunks. Mike produced a big flashlight and shone it up into the branches.

A human being, naked and shivering violently, stood on one of the branches ten feet up, clinging to the trunk. A girl. Andy just had time to register the figure's wild copper hair and the glint of the metal collar on her neck before she stared down into the light, unseeing and terrified.

_Kat._

"Does look a little like a treed puma," Diehl said, looking up into the tree, and Andy realized he'd breathed her name aloud. "Don't know why Central's so worried about them getting away. None of them would last another hour out here like that. Well. I'll hold the light, you take the shot."

Incredulous, Andy stared at his friend. "You can't be serious."

"Dead serious." Mike waved an arm upward. "This isn't just some random chick off the street, Grissom. This is one of IO's experiments. We both know the Shop plays with some seriously nasty shit, and they play for keeps. Maybe she's a plague carrier, or knows how to dupe the nuclear launch codes. I don't really need to know specifics." He frowned. "Come on, man. When did you ever need a dossier on somebody they put in your crosshairs?" He locked eyes. "It's not like you know her or anything."

Andy's hands flexed on the rifle. _They know._

Mike saw it, sighed softly, and shook his head. "You really are getting old, Griss. Time was, you'd never have taken anybody's word that a gun was loaded." He reached into his coat and produced a pistol. "Let's get this over with. Turn your back if you want, I won't tell." Andy stopped breathing until the other man said,"Then we can join the others, and I'll tell them you did it." Diehl pointed flashlight and weapon back up into the trees. Andy changed the grip on the rifle, preparing to buttstroke the old friend who'd probably just bent orders to spare his life.

A voice from the shadows made them both start. "You'll be joining the others sooner than you expect."

Something rushed out of the darkness, throwing up a cloud of snow. It struck Diehl, who grunted as he was thrown off his feet. There was a snapping sound, and the man was lying half-buried in a snowdrift half a dozen feet away, an icy mist of fine snow drifting down around him. The flashlight, now lying far from his hand, shone on the trunk of the tree, and on a figure in black-and-gray camo crouched between Andy and its base.

It was the creature from the photos. Her braided tail fell over her shoulder and brushed the snow. It was stained with blood, as were her hands and jacket. She grinned at him. There was blood in her teeth.

Andy lifted his weapon, somehow unsurprised to see it wasn't a Ruger anymore but the EMP rifle from the lab. The sighting dot found the little monster's forehead and madea caste mark.

Caitlin, invisible in the darkness above, spoke for the first time."P-p-please. No."

"Which of us is she talking to, do you suppose?" The creature spoke with Annie's voice, but the inflection was all wrong, twisted by madness. "Time to get off the fence, eh, Sarge? And I guess I see which side you came down on."

"_Annie?_" The red dot wavered on her forehead. "No."

"No," she agreed. "She's not here, not anymore. She didn't want to be me again, ever. But." She briefly turned her eyes upward to indicate the girl in the tree. "She did say she'd do anything, didn't she?" Still grinning, she took a step towards him. "Think your clothes may just fit the redhead, if I don't mess them up too bad."

"Annie, forgive me." He pulled the trigger.

She stopped; so did his heart. Then the grin widened. "Like your buddy said, Sarge. You can't trust somebody else to tell you a gun is loaded."

"Griss! Wake up!" Diehl's voice again, and a hand shaking his shoulder.

He jerked to a sitting position. He was lying on a couch in the lodge. Mike was standing over him, worry creasing his face. Past him, Andy could see a table full of card players staring, then looking away. He pressed a hand to his hammering heart.

"Griss," Mike said, "do you need something?"

"No." He took deep breaths, and felt his pulse slow. He glanced at the cheerily burning fireplace: gas logs, not wood. "Bad dream."

Mike nodded. "We've all had our share."

Later, when Andy was in the kitchen downing one of his pills with a glass of water, Burt came in to fetch a round. As he pulled items out of the fridge, he said, "Mike's right, Griss. We all been there. If you need to talk about something, this is the place."

_Not this shit_, Andy thought. _This is the exact wrong place to talk about it._ "Thanks. I'll keep it in mind."

Burt shut the refrigerator and turned to him. "Don't say anything if you don't want, but… This girl Annie. Somebody you lost?"

_Jesus Christ, I talked in my sleep?_ Andy took a shaky breath. "Yeah. Somebody I lost."_But did I ever really have her?_

Tuesday Oct 10  
Escondido

"Happy eighteenth, Eddie." Sarah smiled at him from the kitchen doorway. "The boy becomes a man."

Eddie paused with the cereal-laden spoon halfway to his mouth. There'd been a tectonic shift in Sarah's attitude since she'd started spending her nights with Bobby, and the change was more than welcome, but sometimes he wondered what was going on behind those dark–chocolate eyes these days. "Uh, thanks, Princess. You're the first to mention." Not surprising, since the sun wasn't even warming the windows yet.

"Really. I'm sure Anna remembers."

"Haven't seen her yet. L-Man either. Kat is still sleeping." Cautiously, he asked, "What about Bobby?"

"Dead to the world. Roxanne?"

"Think I heard her in the bathroom. But she might not even remember. You know how she is with dates."

The Apache Princess scoffed. "She knows." She turned. "I'll be right back." By the time Eddie had the bowl tipped to his lips for the last swallow of milk, she reappeared at the door, her hands behind her back. "Mr. Lynch says IO is already pulling out of town, but it'll still be a few days before he feels safe letting us leave the house. I've got something in mind to buy you, but I didn't want the day to go by without giving you something." She brought one hand forward and presented him with an envelope, greeting-card size.

"Thanks." He reached to take the card from her hand, but she didn't let go. He looked up and met her eyes.

She said, "I can't even remember what I got you the past two years."

"Sixteenth was a book about sexual addiction. Last year, I got a tie."

She scoffed. "I really made a project out of putting you down, didn't I? I even tried to drive a wedge between you and Roxanne. Protectiveness was part of it, I'm sure, but not the biggest part. I guess I was just trying to make you as unhappy as I was. I owe you for that." She leaned forward. "They say the best gift is one that you know the other person wants but would never ask for." She let go of the envelope.

Puzzled, he opened the flap on the envelope and drew out the card. Only, it wasn't a card, it was a piece of heavy photo paper, blank. He flipped it over…

Eddie's eyes felt as big as golf balls as he stared. He tried to say something, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out was, "Guh."

"Nice to see I've still got it."Her voice was coolly amused, more like the old Sarah."Anna took it for me last night, with grave misgivings and a slew of warnings. But I think she did a good job, don't you?"

The picture was a digital of Sarah, standing at the foot of her lamplit bed in a pinup-girl pose, turned three-quarters away and looking over her shoulder at the camera. Her inky hair, unbound, cascaded in a thick tangle down her back. She wasn't wearing so much as an earring. There was no frontal exposure, but he was seeing all he could ever want of the Princess's bare booty and legs and hips and shoulders and wasp-slender waist, a visual feast of flawless café-au-lait skin. Both heels were raised off the floor, shaping her thighs and calves in a way that made his glutes tighten, and one slightly raised knee drew the eyes like magnets to her exposed inner thigh. One hand rested suggestively on the ball of the footboard's tall corner post; the back of the other brushed her ass, almost caressing it. Her slightly raised arm gave him a beautiful side view of her breast, with only the nipple hidden. The pose seemed to convey that she'd just walked to the bed and paused to see if she was being followed. The look in her eye could only mean one thing. His vapor-soaked brain supplied a caption: _Coming?_

Finally, he coughed out, "Uh, I think there's a mixup. This one's for Bobby."

"No, it's not. Not counting Darwin's basement, you're now the fourth man to see me naked since puberty. And, FYI, Bobby's not one of the other three."

He pulled his eyes away from the photo. Sarah's other hand was out from behind her back now, holding a pair of scissors. "Tiny pieces and down the disposer, Mister Photographic Memory. I'd say burn it, but it would set off the smoke detector."

"Surprised it hasn't gone off already. Sarah, I…"

She smiled a secret smile and put the scissors in his hand. "You're welcome. Better hurry, before somebody comes downstairs."

-0-

Sitting on the daycare's playground bench, Adrienne caught her son's smile and wave from the top of the slide and returned them. The smocked young woman watching the kids for the daycare gave her a little smile as well before giving her attention to a child tugging on her sleeve. Drew let go of the rails and slid down, then headed for the monkey bars.

Adrienne's phone chimed. She looked at the display: blank. Her grip tightened a little on the phone, and she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly before she pressed the 'send' button to connect. "Hello?"

"_Hey, stranger._"

"Hi, Kat."She looked out over the playground at her boy, now climbing the nest of pipes.

"_I didn't wake you up, I'm sure. I can hear the kid riot. Daycare?_"

"Right. Drew's hanging by his heels as we speak." She kept her voice light and even, and her eyes on her child.

"_You sound tired._"

"Short nights. I'm interviewing, dancers and staff both. Most of them already have jobs at other clubs, and day jobs too. So I'm meeting them after closing."

"_And getting up on four hours' sleep to see Drew._" Adrienne could hear the smile in the other woman's voice. "_Swear_, y_ou'd do anything for that little guy._"

She blinked rapidly and swallowed. "Yeah. I really would."

"_Adrienne._" Kat's voice turned low and concerned. "_This isn't just lack of sleep. What's wrong?_"

"Might be coming down with something. You still on lockdown, girlfriend?"

"_Smooth change of subject. Yes, but I should make parole by the weekend. Maybe we could do something._"

"That'd be nice if I can squeeze it in. The remodeling crews work Saturdays, and Sunday is my day with Drew."

"_Hm._" A moment of silence, then: "_Adrienne, have you talked to Daniel lately?_"

She reminded herself to breathe normally. "Not since Friday. I drove him home from the airport. He was with Drew and Andy when I left him." _The first time._

"_He didn't call last night. That's not like him. I know he talks to you sometimes late, and I thought maybe._"

"No." She watched her son, concentrating on his smile, remembering the scent of his hair in the sun and the living warmth of him in her arms. "I think he was expecting a rough week at work. Maybe they're just keeping him too busy."

"_Yeah… I suppose. Listen, if he calls you…_"

"I'll let him know you're worried about him."

"_Don't say that. Just… sound him out, you know? Find out if he's okay._"

"Okay." Her voice sounded hollow in her own ears. "And you do the same. But I've got a feeling he won't be calling either of us this week." She glanced at her watch: twelve minutes left until the end of recess. "Listen, Drew's about to go in. I need to say goodbye to him."

"_Kay. I'll talk to you later. Take care._"

"Caitlin."

"_Hm?_"

"I really like you, Kat. I just wanted to say that."

"_Well-_" The girl seemed at a loss for a moment. "_I like you too, Adrienne. A lot._"A pause. "_I have a cousin. I haven't seen her in years, but she's like a big sister to me. Having you for a friend is almost like having Karen back in my life._"

Adrienne closed her eyes. "Thanks. Gotta go. Talk to you later." She disconnected. When she opened them, Drew was standing in front of her with solemn eyes. Without a word, he sat on the bench beside her, feet dangling. She reached over and pulled him close for a moment, then released him. "Go play. Recess is almost over."

"You're sad again."

"Not for long." She smiled. "See? Go on. Watching you have fun makes me happy."

After he left, Adrienne punched in the land line number for her old house - just Drew and Danny's now. As always, she felt a sense of irony as the machine picked up and she heard her own cheery voice: "_Hello, you've reached Danny and Adrienne. Please leave your name and number-_" She wondered how long it would be before Dan thought to play the recorded greeting while he was listening to his messages. Then she wondered if perhaps he already had.

She thought carefully about what she would leave on the recorder: she'd have to be a lot more convincing than she'd been with Kat. Dan knew her better, and might replay the message, looking for signs of insincerity or other mistakes. _Keep it simple_, she thought. _If you're having trouble keeping your emotions out of your voice, damn it, use them. _When the 'recording' beep sounded, she said, "I don't know if I should be doing this. I don't even know what I called to say, really. Old habits are just hard to break, I guess. Specially if they're bad ones. I just … Kat's a wonderful kid, and she could really love you someday, I know. I won't … I mean, I… Oh, hell." She hung up, and considered. Call again tomorrow, to reinforce the message? No, she decided: he played all his messages at once, when he arrived home from Boulder, and hearing a string of ones like that would ring false. Better to let him hear that single plaint and nothing after, to help him believe she was avoiding any temptation to steer his decision.

The daycare attendant clapped her hands, signaling the end of the outdoor play period. Children began to line up at the door, but Drew came to his mother first, arms outstretched for a goodbye hug, and she slid off the bench and knelt in the wood chips to hold him.

Wednesday Oct 11

As was her custom since they'd been roommates at the beach house, Roxanne opened the door to Caitlin's room without knocking. She got a single step inside and paused at the sight of her 'sister' sitting on the edge of the high wood-framed bed, a closed shoebox in her lap. Roxy recognized it instantly, though she'd never seen it anywhere but under the bed.

Kat didn't act caught or guilty; she simply raised her chin to regard Roxy with misty eyes. "Close the door."

Roxy complied, bumping a hip behind it to make sure it was firmly seated in the jamb. Then, with the help of her Gen, she dragged Kat'sheavy reading chair to the door and wedged its back under the doorknob.

Roxy stood in front of the seated girl. "Why don't you?" She asked quietly. "Just one."

"Because it would only make it harder."

"What did he do to you?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon, Kat. Fess up. Good for the soul."

"Good for the soul, right." Kat rested a hand on the box's lid. "He didn't do anything to hurt me, Roxy. I'm sure he never would." She took the box in her hands, bent, and slid it under the bed. "I'm not changing my mind. I just had a weak moment, is all. I wish Daniel would call."

_And I wish he'd never call again_, Roxy thought. Dan Grissom was all wrong for Kat. She'd never met the guy, had nothing to go on but Kat and Anna and Sarah's descriptions, but that was enough to build a picture, a picture very much like the one of Kat's dad in Mr. Lynch's study. Under Ranger Dan's charm and rough good looks there were a lot of hard sharp edges a girl like Kat could hurt herself on.

Gentle, ascetic Luis seemed perfect for her – more now, even, than when they'd met. Why wouldn't she answer his letters, or even read them? Why did she refuse to even let the other girls talk about him or read their letters from him aloud in her presence? Anybody could see how hard she'd fallen for the mysterious dark-haired young hunk that Mr. Lynch and Anna had brought home for a week's stay. But Caitlin had been iron on the subject.

Kat was treating Luis like an addiction she was working hard to beat. But Roxy knew girls who had done tragically stupid things with rebound boyfriends, and Kat, who'd never had a serious relationship with a guy before, worried her greatly. If she had her way, Caitlin and Dan would never be alone together for five minutes. Roxy sat beside the big redhead and put a hand on her knee. "Well, you'll see him Friday, right?"

"Or Saturday." Kat looked at the chair under the doorknob and scoffed. "Who was _that_ for?"

Roxy shrugged. "Bobby, mostly. Not that he'd just walk into your room without knocking,but if he thought you needed help…"

"Or heard me bawling, I suppose?" Kat brushed at her eyes with a fingertip, careful not to smear her scant makeup. "Notlikely, Sis. Like I said, a weak moment, that's all."

Boulder

Dan braced his legs, tucked his elbows tight against his sides, shifted his grip on the bar pressing against his thighs, and brought the barbell up smoothly to his chin, grunting at the end of his effort. He lowered it smoothly, almost to its original position, and repeated the exercise. Ten reps later, he lowered it halfway and dropped it into its rest, completing his third set of curls.

He lifted the hem of his sodden cutoff sweatshirt and wiped the sweat from his eyes. After working out nonstop for two hours and pressing himself hard, his heart was pounding, and he felt rubbery all over. He also felt curiously loose and light-limbed, which was a pleasant change. It seemed leaving his room in the middle of the night to hit IO Central's gym for some endorphin therapy was just what he'd needed for the heaviness of spirit that had been weighing him down all week.

He reached for the towel lying across the rest and mopped his dripping face. His mood was lifted somewhat for now, but he knew it wouldn't last; his problems with Kat and Adrienne were unchanged, and a decision as far away as ever. He was still spending his evenings at Boulder with Colby's men, but hadn't called Kat from the bar, and he'd resolved not to call Adrienne for casual reasons ever again. This problem was nothing to handle over the phone, he thought, and he was sure he couldn't speak to his girlfriend about mundane matters while it was hanging over his head. He'd have to talk to her this weekend, face-to-face, and settle things.

He suddenly felt an unexplained wave of expectancy and pleasure wash over him. He just had time to recognize the sensation before one of the big room's double doors opened and Nicole Callahan stepped through. His hands squeezed the towel as his eyes took her in. The girl seemed dressed more for sunbathing than exercise, in a pair of black tap shorts that barely covered her ass and were slit to the hip besides, and an elastic top that provided hardly more coverage than a brassiere. Her look of surprise toned down his internal alarms - until she smiled."Well. Dan."

He held the towel bunched in front of him. "Uh, hi." She was gorgeous and incredibly sexy in her little outfit, and he couldn't take his eyes off her."You here to work out?"

"Yep." She moved off toward the exercise machines at the other end of the room. "I've usually got the place to myself this time of night. Which is why I come."

"Sorry. I can leave." _I hope._

"I'd rather you didn't, really. Sharing the gym with one guy in the weight room isn't a problem. It just isn't safe when the place gets crowded." She mounted a stairstep machine and began to dial it in.

"Safe?"

"Uh huh. You're far enough away, don't worry." She smiled at the machine's display. "I mean, I'm sure you're thinking of jumping my bones right now, but wouldn't you anyway? If I was just some hottie walking in to use the Stairmaster?"

He scoffed, and suddenly felt some slack in the invisible line pulling him towards her; he saw her as she'd described herself: an exotic and sexy young woman wearing too little clothing, very tempting but not irresistible. Was she throttling down her power, or using it somehow to put him at ease, or was she simply far enough away? "Well, for a second or two, anyway." He started to add weight to the bar. "Maybe ten. Followed by ten seconds of guilt and remorse."

The stair machine started up with a soft whine, and the girl's bare white thighs rose and fell in an alternating rhythm that drew his eyes. "Guilt and remorse? Oh, the girlfriend, right. Well, like they say, looking's not cheating."

The last of his previous good mood evaporated. "So they say. Not that I ever believed it." He carefully picked up the heavy bar, turned away from her, and lowered it to the floor, crouching over it in preparation for a dead lift set."Although, in this case, I think she'd understand." When he raised his head to begin, he saw her reflection smiling at him from one of the room's ubiquitous mirrors.

"That's right, I think you said she works at the Shop. But not in Research. That's convenient. I bet she's pretty, too. Blonde or redhead? I'm guessing she's not dark-haired."

Wary again, he said, "Blonde." He straightened his back and legs carefully, and stood with the bar against his thighs. _Change the subject, right now. _"You come here every night?" _Do you come here often? God. Please don't let her think that's a pickup line._

"Only nights I'm alone."

"That can't happen often." His ears warmed. "I mean…"

"You meant what you said. Don't worry about it. You're never going to insult me by saying you know I sleep around."

They exercised in companionable silence for some time. She moved from the stair machine to a mat and started doing floor exercises. Sneaking glances her way, Dan made several observations that he would have been too lust-blinded to note the first time they'd met. Nicole Callahan's skin was so fair it could be compared to milk, but so flawless he couldn't imagine it being improved by a tan. She hadn't put her hair up to work out, and perspiration had caused it to curl a little and darken still further, the strange purple highlights disappearing. As she bent and flexed and stretched, he saw that she was as limber as a yoga instructor, or possibly a ballerina; he wondered if she danced.

He also noted, with a little embarrassment, that her shorts were too brief to conceal her panties: plain white cotton, Bikini cut. A conservative, almost virginal selection, he thought, more suitable to Caitlin than a girl with Nicole Callahan's rep.

"I'd have covered up a little more, if I hadn't been so sure I'd be alone." Sitting spraddle-legged on the mat, Nicole grasped the ankle of her outstretched leg and bent forward until her chin touched her knee. "But I'm kind of a narcissist. I like the way I look naked. Put me in a room full of mirrors, and I just feel strange in clothes." The violet eyes stared blankly at the toe of her crosstrainer. "Sometimes when I'm alone in here, I think about just peeling down to my skin and turning all around, taking in all those reflections." She suddenly smiled and looked up at him. "I'm shocking you."

"No."_Are you a graduate of one of those rooms in Darwin's basement, Nicole? If so, how much of it do you remember, and how deeply did it mark you?_ He bent to put the bar on the floor, and to hide his face. "I'm just getting the visual."

She actually giggled. Her voice nearly broke his heart, she sounded so young. She switched to the other ankle. "If you're feeling guilty about getting a free show, you could quid pro quo. Maybe take your shirt off?"

"I… think I'll live with the guilt, thanks."_Did you scream and pound on the wall? Talk to your reflections? Are you what Kat would have been if she hadn't escaped before they broke her?_

She rose and headed for the workout machines. "I usually start with the thigh adducer, but if I do, I don't think you'll finish that set before you cool off." She started adjusting the weight stack at the pulldown station, her back to him.

They shared a bit more solitary exercise, him in the free weight area, her on the circuit training machines at the other end of the room. Nicole's workout, while not light, seemed geared toward maintenance rather than development – which was as it should be, he thought; the dark-haired beauty was perfectly proportioned already. Perfectly toned, too, though muscle definition wasn't easy to discern against that creamy skin, except where perspiration highlighted it.

After she finished up a set of presses, Nicole sat up and straddled the press bench and rested her elbows on the station's handles behind her. "You want to talk about it?"

Dan, lying head-down on an incline bench with a five-kilo weight held to his chest, was about to begin a sit-up set; instead, he said, "Talk about what?"

"You're not pumping iron at one in the morning for the peace and quiet. Something's keeping you awake, and you came down here to push it out of your mind." A moment later, she said, "And, judging by our conversation a little earlier, I'd guess it has something to do with your girlfriend. And cheating."

He froze.

"Talking with people is what I do, Dan. And you gave me plenty of clues. Like the way you kept mentioning guilt. It was you, not her, right?" After a moment of heavy silence, she said, "I'm not judging here. And I probably don't have any worthwhile advice to give you. Sometimes you just need to share your problems with somebody."

…_who reports directly to IvanaBaiul? _He sat up and dropped the weight to the floor, then cleared his throat. "Why do you think your advice wouldn't be worth anything? You must know guys inside and out."

"Not like that. I've never even had a boyfriend."

Daniel stared at the beautiful half-naked girl sitting fifteen yards away. "Say _what_?"

She gave him a humorless little smile. "All my relationships are one-night-stands, Dan. That's the way it's got to be."

"Oh." He assayed, "Your talent."

She nodded. "I'm sure you've heard all the stories."

"Don't think so."

"Oh?" Her eyebrows lifted. Nicole had the most arresting eyes, he realized, and seemed to get deeper the longer you looked into them…

He slipped off the incline bench and took a better seat on the press bench, a little farther away. "I don't think I've been here long enough to hear them all."

She scoffed. "After awhile, they all sound the same. I don't do second dates, Dan. It would be more dangerous for him than the first. So…"

"You sleep around."

"I hope you're not feeling sorry for me or anything. Most guys would pay real money to be in my situation."

"Or think they would." He hesitated. "Ever been with a married man?"

She head-shrugged. "Once, for sure. I took an instant dislike to the wife. I thought he deserved better."

"No regrets, then."

"Oh, I didn't say that." She shrugged again. "It was impulsive. Looking back, I should have passed him up. So. What are _you_ feeling all regretful about?"

It occurred to him that Nicole, a Genactive who'd been at Darwin and shared many of Kat's most significant experiences, might make a very good audience for a rehearsal of his intended confession._You feel completely in the dark about how a girl like Caitlin might react to what you need to say? Maybe this is a way to find out. But you'd have to be very, very careful. _He swallowed. "You're right. I was with another woman."

"Oh." Her eyelids lowered, and she looked at him coyly through her lashes. "And you're afraid your girl will find out."

"Afraid of what will happen when I tell her."

"Tell her?" Her mouth turned up at the corners. "Why do you want to do that?"

"Well, because it's the right thing to do."

"Oh, I see," she said in a mocking tone. "You want to break up with her."

"_No_," he said, then his mind sort of froze. _Don't I?_

Nicole was studying him carefully. "You don't think she'll dump you?"

He stared at the bench between his thighs. "I hope that's all she does. She's sweet and kind of innocent, and I'm afraid she might…"

"Oh, _brother_." Nicole shook her head. "Got to tell you, Dan, _innocent_ just doesn't suit your style. Maybe there's a reason you strayed."

He felt a twinge of anger. "You're awfully opinionated, for somebody who claims she doesn't know anything about men and relationships."

"I never had one of my own, but I've got plenty of girlfriends, Dan, and they talk. Do they _ever_. I've heard a thousand breakup stories." She leaned back between the handlebars to rest her shoulders on the bench. "And they usually happen for good reasons."

He shook his head. "I just don't want to hurt her." _Any more than necessary._

"Oh, _that_ old excuse. You hurt her plenty already, she just doesn't feel it yet. Best thing you could do for both of you is leave her. Go ahead and confess, it'll make you both feel better afterward. But _don't_ let her forgive you and take you back. The two of you are done. End it clean." She gripped the handles, adjusted her shoulders, and began another set. "Believe me… unnh." She locked her arms and held the bar above her. "No good will come of trying to keep her and start fresh. Don't kid yourself this is going to be the last time. This is just the last time you'll confess." She lowered it and paused again."Cheating on her will trouble your conscience less and less, and hiding it from her will seem more and more effort, because deep down you're hoping she'll catch you. And sooner or later, she will." She rested another moment, still gripping the bars. "Is _that_ how you want it to end?" When she saw that he wasn't going to answer, she shoved the bar toward the ceiling again. "Unnh. Don't pull at the wound any more, Dan. Cauterize it."

_You wanted her advice_, the little voice said. _Can you trust it?_ "I'll have to think on that one."

"Don't wait too long, if there's any chance of her finding out some other way." She finished her set and sat up again. "Who else knows?"

"Just the woman I was with."_ Adrienne wouldn't tell – I think – but she might let something slip._

"Was she just a one-nighter, a stranger in a bar, something like that?"

"No. We all… we know one another."

"Not good. Does she maybe have designs on you?"

"She thinks it was a big mistake."

The girl eyed him keenly; even from this distance, Nicole's eyes were mesmerizing. "That doesn't tell you a damned thing about her intentions _now_, Dan." She stood. "Should have brought a towel. Borrow yours?"

He said uncomfortably, "It's a little damp."

The Mona Lisa smile was back. "I don't mind sharing a little sweat if you don't. Toss it?"

He could have thrown a ball the distance easily, but the rectangle of cloth would be another story. Trying to place it in her hand seemed riskier than skydiving without a chute. He tied a quick knot in one end to weight it, then whirled it by the untied end and released it to sail over to her.

She caught it neatly, smiling. But instead of wiping herself with it, she brought it close to her face and inhaled. "Mmm. Call me weird, but I think fresh sweat smells better than cologne. Depending on where it comes from, of course." She blotted her face and limbs and breasts, smiling faintly at him the whole time while his breathing roughened. She approached him with the towel pressed against her bare belly between navel and waistband.

He stood, thinking he'd back up so she could lay it on the bench, but his legs seemed to have forgotten that particular motion. Her eyes caught his and held them, and his inner alarms faded away as she halved the distance between them. When he felt himself begin to lean toward her as if about to take a step, she stopped. He cleared his throat. "I, uh, can you toss it from there?"

She held the towel in her hand a moment more, almost as if weighing it - or weighing a decision. "Sure." She flipped it at him, a sure throw that she could have made almost from where she'd been sitting. "I'm headed for the shower and bed. You should too, big guy."

The cloth in his hands smelled of her – perfume or soap, he didn't know what, but damned good. He nodded. "I will." _Whether I'll sleep is another thing. And I think my shower's going to be a cold one._

They stood regarding each other for a few moments more, then she said quietly, "Could you move away from the door a little? I don't think I can get past you."

He was already six feet from the door, but he understood. He took two steps back. "Okay?"

"Plenty." She moved toward the door, no longer looking at him.

It suddenly occurred to him that Nicole was _lonely_.

And then she was surrounded by soft light, and he saw her once again as she truly was, a creature of unearthly beauty, too lovely and tragic for this world. He ached to hold her, to cure her of loneliness forever. Her eyes were gems, their color and luster infinite; they widened and he started to fall into them….

She took two quick steps back and held a hand up. He realized he'd been reaching for her. "Jeez, Dan. Take a couple more."

He did as she bid, blushing. "Sorry."

"You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about." But she frowned at him. "You're really sensitized."

She was a normal girl again, or as normal as she was ever likely to be. He felt dull, slow: the way he did sometimes after an action, when the adrenaline was washing out of his system and his brain caught up with whatever he'd just done automatically through training and reflex. "Sensitized."

"Yeah. On some guys – most guys, really – exposure to I-S has a cumulative effect. That's why it's more dangerous a second time." The frown deepened. "I know I was 'casting pretty hard the first time we met, but you never got within ten feet of me. You're acting almost like I touched you for a second."

His breath caught._ Kat. I've been within arm's length of her for hours. I've held her hand. But we've never even kissed…she almost seems afraid to… _

"_I saw the video. Fairchild backed him up to the pump and snogged him. When she let go, he was her slave."_

She shrugged. "We don't know as much about it as we'd like. Some people are more resistant than others. You must just be super susceptible." She moved toward the door. "How about you take one more? Just to be safe."

He took two.

She nodded and approached the door. As she did, Dan said, "Nicole. It was good talking to you. Thanks."

She paused with one hand on the door handle. "It was nice talking with you too, Dan. Too nice." She pulled the door open slowly. "I won't be back here tomorrow."

"Neither will I."

"Good."


	15. Breaking Up is Hard To Do

Friday Oct 13  
Escondido

"Hey." Annie stood smiling in Andy's doorway, a twine-handled bag in each hand. "Welcome home, mighty hunter. I assume you didn't drag back a bear for me to skin and dress, so I brought dinner." She lifted the bags and he took them from her hands. The smile faded away when, instead of carrying them to the kitchen, he set them on the floor beside him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing new." He stood silent, struggling for a way to begin.

He'd forgotten about the sharpness of her senses, and her ability to read a man. Her hands crossed over her mouth, and her eyes grew huge. "_Why_?"

He felt a stab in his heart, figuratively and physically. "Nothing you did." _Except in dreams._ The one about the meeting in the woods had only been the first. They were all variations on a theme: Annie's kids in danger, Andy either a witness or an unwilling participant. Sometimes Annie became the killer from Chula Vista, meeting every perceived threat with the ferocity of a cornered animal protecting its young; other times she remained his Annie, and failed, killed or captured by the men after her kids. His subconscious had been trying desperately to tell him something, and Andy thought he understood.

He resisted the urge to grasp her clenched hands and pull them down from her face. "But being away from you gave me a chance to think clear. Annie, we need to step back."

"Step back." Her face settled, not looking at him. She lowered her hands to her sides. "Can we step inside and shut the door, at least?"

They sat in the dining room with the table between them. She stared at her hands resting on its polished surface. "I should have seen this coming. What good's having a computer for a brain if you don't use it?" She lifted her eyes to his face for a moment. "But you're a bug in my software. You always were." Her gaze dropped again. "I only just found you again, and now I have to give you up."

He took a breath, once again stilling the impulse to reach for those child-sized hands. "You're under my protection, Annie. Always. I'll do anything I can to help you, to keep you and your kids safe." He swallowed. "And that's the reason why. We can still pass messages, maybe even call if we're careful. But seeing you increases our risk of being found out by a thousand percent at least. And it exposes a weakness they'll be quick to exploit if one of us is caught. The odds against us are already too high, Annie."

Her hands crept across the table towards his. He pulled them back. "And that's another unacceptable risk." He locked eyes. "I'm sure you know how I feel about you. There's nothing I want more right now than to pick you up and carry you down the hall. But I won't risk the mission or your marriage. I'm sorry, sweetheart. But I have to do this."

"For both of us." She stared at her hands a moment longer, then pulled them back and dropped them off the table. "I can never doubt you care, or that you'll keep your promise. You're still a bastard. And I'll still love you, always." She stood. "I think I'd better go, before I start trying to change your mind. Keep the food. And the dishes."

San Diego

Standing once again under the big canopy at San Diego International, Dan peered up the road past the bright illumination of the immediate area into the gloom beyond, searching for a sign of his approaching ride. He'd arrived alone, Jared having opted for his usual Saturday-morning flight. Dan had called his father's cell phone and been greatly relieved to hear that he was home from his trip and available for a pickup; if he hadn't been, Dan would have phoned for a cab. He wasn't ready for a conversation with either of the women in his life just yet.

He hadn't slept since Wednesday night. After his talk with Nicole, he'd showered – not cold; as hot as he could stand, scrubbing his hands hard to remove the last traces of her scent. He'd lain down on top of his covers, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

His worries about confessing his infidelity were now eclipsed by a rash of new concerns, all centering around what Kat called 'allure' and IO the 'incubus-succubus effect'. He'd thought he understood the characteristics and limits of Kat's psychic mating call and had a handle on it; the brush with Nicole made him realize how little he'd really known, and how badly he'd been fooling himself.

If Nicole was right – and who would know better? – the unreasoning part of his attraction for Caitlin would grow every time he was with her, until he was just as stupidly adoring and rutty with her as he'd been with Nicole at their first meeting. His skin crawled at the thought.

Kat, like Nicole, had never had a boyfriend.

Did she know? Was her reserve a product of caution rather than shyness? Was that the real reason they hadn't gone past hand-holding? His earlier assumptions about that now seemed naïve.

"_Julius Gierling was the man who recruited her to the Academy. She turned him. He murdered his partner to be with her."_ Had catching Lynch really been Gierling's only motive for Lething his partner and fleeing with Kat across four states?

Kat's story of her imprisonment was heartrending, and Dad was tight with her stepmom, but would that be enough to get Dan to do what he was doing for them? How much was her 'allure' already influencing his decisions?

And there was a greater and more immediate danger. Repeated exposure to Caitlin would increase his sensitivity not just to her, but to any Genactive female, he now knew. He remembered the momentary wave of desire he'd felt on first meeting Kat's friend Sarah, the Queen of Spades. Then he remembered his first meeting with Nicole, and how he'd blurted out Kat's name. As Kat's power over him grew, so would IO's chief interrogator's. Someday Nicole might offer him an innocent remark as she passed by him in the hallway, and his addled brain would send something past his lips that would get Kat and her people caught.

The ceiling had provided no answers.

Neither had the men from Colby's security detail, during their get-together Thursday night at the bar. Ernesto Castro, as he'd shuffled the cards he'd brought, had said, "Mind's not on the game, newbie. Almost feel guilty taking your money."

"Sorry," Dan had said. "Thinking."

Brad had given Mike Loud a sideways glance. "Girl trouble?" They'd noticed he wasn't calling Kat this week, of course, but had said nothing.

"Sort of. I spent an hour with Nicole last night."

Castro had stopped shuffling.

"Not like _that_," Dan had amended. "I was in the gym, and she came in. We talked a little between sets."

The three men had all looked at him as if he were relating clearing a minefield with a bayonet.

"She did most of the talking," Dan had gone on. "Gossip, mostly. You wouldn't think a girl like Nicole would have any girlfriends, but she does."

They'd relaxed, slightly. Loud had said, "Yeah. She's easy to like. Probably real easy if you're not thinking about screwing her all the time. She hangs out with half the fems at Central. They just don't take her along to the club on Ladies' Night."

Castro had begun to deal. "So, you just listened to her chatter and watched her get all sweaty on the Nautilus. Nice." But there had been a question in his tone that made it clear he still thought he was talking to an imbecile.

Dan had stared at his cards without reading them. "Yeah. But, the longer she was there, the better she looked. Even forty feet wasn't far enough away, really. When she passed by on her way out, I almost put my hand on her ass."

"And if you did that, you'd keep it there all the way to her room. Stay away from her, man."

"Believe me," he'd said, "I'm trying."

In the darkness beyond the drive leading to the canopy, a set of headlights appeared, high and close-set: his father's Jeep. Dan took a breath and released it. The vehicle slipped into the light and rolled to a stop in front of him. Dan opened the door. On the rear bench, Drew sat belted into his booster seat, sleeping. Dan carefully placed his bag beside his son, then got in the shotgun seat. His father glanced at him and nodded, but pulled away from the curb without a word.

As the nimble little vehicle threaded its way through the airport traffic, Dan examined his silent father. Dad looked less like a man who'd just come home from a week's vacation than one who'd been pulling double shifts at work. "You look tired, Dad. How was the trip?"

"Didn't get much sleep," Andrew Grissom said to the windshield. "Got back this afternoon. I saw Annie three hours ago."

Something in his father's tone and choice of words alerted Dan that an announcement was on the way. He sat silent, waiting.

"I told her I was on her side, and always would be," the man went on. "That she could count on me for anything. But I wasn't going to see her anymore."

Dan didn't ask why; he was just grateful that his father's head had cleared enough to see how impossible his relationship with Anne was. A troubled girl less than half his age and married besides, a fugitive hunted by the people who signed his pension checks – and who might kill him for not turning her in, if they found out, or use him to catch her if they suspected… "I'm sorry, Dad."

"Me too. I know it was never going anywhere, but still. Feels kind of like I caught my hand in a bear trap, and cut it off to get free." His head gave an odd little shrug, almost a twitch. "Ate two of those damn pills afterward. I'm never going to forget the look in her eyes when I told her."

Dan nodded. "I know it was hard. But I think it was the right thing. For both of you."

"Yeah." The car paused at a light. Dan's father turned to him. "So, when are you going to do what's right for you and Kat?"

Escondido

John Lynch sat at the kitchen's little bistro table and sipped at his cocoa. "You're certainly in a good mood tonight." He had to bring the mug to his face carefully, since his wife was sitting sideways in his lap with her arms around his neck.

"Mm hmm." Anna pressed her nose into the left side of his neck. "You could put me in a better one, after you're done with that."

With his other hand, he grasped her hip and snugged her tighter against him. "What's the occasion? The kids were asking too." Anna had served her special cocoa to one and all, a sure sign she was especially happy about something. But she hadn't explained a thing.

"I know. I guess I could say it's to celebrate their being off lockdown. But that's not the whole story." Her lips brushed the join between his neck and shoulder, lingering over his scars. "Andy told me tonight he couldn't see me anymore. In person, that is. Security concerns. He was so noble and self-sacrificing about it, I almost laughed. I'm going to miss him, more than a little."

He took a sip and set the mug on the table, hoping his relief didn't show and knowing that it did, to her at least. "And how are things going with Caitlin and his son?"

Her fingers wandered through the hair at the back of his head. "I don't know for sure. They're not fighting, but he hasn't called all week. Very unusual. She's pining. I'm sure she'll want to see him tomorrow."

"Hm." He pushed the table away. "I think I should have a talk with this boy."

"Not _now_."

"No." He gathered her up in his arms, stood, and turned toward the door leading to the hallway and the master suite. "But very soon."

Saturday Oct 14 2006  
Oceanside California

For the past eleven years, on the second weekend in October, the Oceanside Fire Department had hosted a carnival to benefit the families of firemen killed in the line of duty. It took place at Firehouse No. 3, a sprawling hilltop property on the eastern outskirts of town which also contained its firefighters' school and training course. It was a well-attended event, spreading community goodwill and bringing a fair bit of change into the trust fund, and a popular annual date night venue.

Dan Grissom stood just outside its front gate, watching the grassy parking area for Caitlin's Charger. He'd arrived early, as he had on their first date; meeting her in a place this public was risky enough, he thought, without letting her stand waiting alone while a thousand strangers passed her by. Occasionally his hand would absently brush the outside of his pocket, touching the Lethe dispenser there – not for reassurance, more out of a sort of disbelief it was there, the way a tongue will explore the socket of a recently pulled tooth.

His call to Caitlin Friday night had been awkward. Kat hadn't given him any attitude over his inattention, or even asked him why he hadn't called. It was as if none of it mattered now that she could hear his voice. With his wife's heart-twisting phone message still playing in his mind, he'd been reminded of how he had let a week lapse between his and Adrienne's first sexual intimacy and his next call, and how Adrienne had taken the rudeness in stride. _I don't deserve a woman like this, let alone two._

Caitlin had heard about the fair and suggested it as a date. "_I've been cooped up in the house for most of the last ten days. I need some fresh air and people,_" she'd said. Dan would far rather have met her someplace secluded and private to speak with her, but he hadn't the heart to refuse her, and had reluctantly agreed.

He never saw her pull in. But he suddenly spotted her red-gold hair out among the parked vehicles, headed his way. From four rows out, she looked over the tops of the cars and spotted her date, and gave him a smile like sunshine as she made her way toward him.

She emerged from the lot, and he saw that she was properly clothed for sixty-degree weather, in jeans and a pink shirt under an open denim jacket that ended at her bottom ribs. She was dressed much more sensibly than many girls her age here, who seemed to think a fair was an opportunity for exhibitionism second only to the beach. But, even covered from throat to toes, she still looked like a model on the catwalk, and pulled at the eyes of every male in Dan's sight.

She drew close, eyes searching his face. She was shod in light, flat-soled shoes; he was wearing hiking boots, whose thick soles halved the difference in their height. Her arms lifted as if she was about to put them around him, or maybe put her hands on his shoulders. But something in his face or posture checked her motion, and she crossed them in front of her instead. "Hi."

"Hi." His tongue felt thick. "You look beautiful."

His compliment brought the faintest and briefest trace of a smile. She did reach for him then, but only took his hand. "Come on. Let's get lost in the crowd."

They strolled the busy midway hand in hand, surrounded by noise and lights and bright colors – and people. Dan studied the effect Caitlin had on the tight-packed revelers: rather like a large ship in a calm channel, male admirers forming a bow wave ahead and a swirling wake behind.

_Get lost in the crowd. As if. _He let out a quiet sigh. How long could she stay hidden in Escondido, or anywhere, if she frequented places like this, where every man who glanced her way would remember her passing? _At least they won't be identifying me_, he thought sourly. _I doubt any of them even notice she's with someone._

A tug on his hand brought his attention back to his companion. Kat said, "We can leave if you want."

He put a smile on his face. "No." The touch of a beautiful girl shouldn't make a man uneasy, he reflected. Except this girl was also an unshielded reactor of sorts, her radiance eating away his free will instead of his flesh. "Do the rides?"

"If you want."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

She stopped, her hand in his bringing him to a halt as well, and looked into his eyes. "I want to pretend we're a normal couple, and things are okay with us. Just for a while. Okay?"

He nodded, a lump in his throat.

They did the rides, at least the ones that accommodated couples. They sat side-by-side in a tiny coaster that lurched and rattled through a course no bigger than a six-car garage. They shared a car shaped like a teacup that spun and circled a center pylon, sitting face-to-face with his knees pressed tightly between hers. They walked through a semi-trailer converted into a funhouse, its sudden flashes and noises stretching his nerves taut. At the exit, a blast of air sent Kat's hair floating around her head; despite his melancholy, Dan flashed on an image of the big redhead in a skirt, her hem lifting around her thighs a la Marilyn Monroe.

They sampled delicious unhealthy fair food from the concession trailers dotting the aisles: tacos, dogs on a stick, elephant ears and waffles slathered with gooey toppings. He saw a blot of chocolate sauce at the corner of her mouth. Unthinking, he wiped it away with a fingertip and touched it to her lips; equally unthinking, she took it into her mouth and licked it. His breath stilled at the sensation imparted by the moment's attention from her lips and tongue. Their eyes met as he pulled the digit free with a soft smacking sound, and a faint blush appeared on her cheek. When she touched her lips to the straw of her drink, he had to look away.

She finished her soft drink with a gurgle and looked out over the crowd. "Is there a restroom anywhere near?"

"Um, back around the corner. The block building next to the milkshake stand."

"Kay. Be right back." She dropped her empty cup into a wastecan a step away, and headed back the way they'd come. He couldn't take his eyes off her until she was out of sight.

Early in their relationship – had he met her only three weeks ago? He'd wondered how much of his attraction to her was hormones and how much was her voodoo. He still wondered, but now his concern was reversed. What he was going to do would be much easier if he could know that his feelings for her were induced by her power.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump. "Sorry," Jared said. "Thought you heard me call." The man's other hand was around the waist of a pretty brunette nearly Jared's height, dressed in shorts and a belly top. "Stacy, this is Dan." His tone implied he'd mentioned Dan before.

She smiled but didn't offer a hand. "Hi."

Dan wondered if this was the girl his friend had nearly talked into dancing at Arena's on Amateur Night. "Hello."

"So, you guys work together. Are you as secretive about what you do as Jared is?"

"More." He glanced back down the aisle.

Jared said, "Here by yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Gee," Stacy said, "_that_ sounds like fun. Just get here?"

"No, been here awhile." Movement at the corner drew his eye, but it wasn't Kat, just another girl probably coming out of the bathroom.

Stacy noticed and smiled at him. "Scoping out the babes, huh? Find anything you like?"

"Plenty," he said, and put on a smile. "Just saw one more."

"Good place to pick one up, if you've got a good line." Her look and tone told Dan that his friend Jared had been telling stories.

Jared said, "We've been all through the place. We're headed out to grab some real food. Come along?"

"No, thanks. I'm stuffed." He looked at his watch. "I do have to leave though. Hope I don't seem rude. Stacy, nice meeting you. Jared, I'll call you later." He strode off quickly down the aisle toward the bathrooms.

-0-

Jared watched his friend leave, thinking. When he'd seen Dan standing alone staring down the aisle, he'd been sure his friend was waiting for someone – or looking for someone. As soon as Dan had recognized Jared, he'd seemed edgy and eager to ditch them. And, wherever he was going, he wasn't leaving the fair: the exits and parking lot were the opposite way. For a moment, Jared wondered if his friend was here with Adrienne. But, Dan's initial reluctance to admit their renewed relationship notwithstanding, Jared thought Dan was too jumpy.

"Babe," He said as he pulled his date toward the exit, "I'm gonna have to send you home. Here's the keys. Have something delivered on my card, kay?"

"What? Why?"

"Cuz I'm back on the clock."

-0-

Dan intercepted his date just two steps short of her rounding the corner. He put a hand on her shoulder to turn her before he spoke. "Let's go this way."

"Daniel," Kat said, "where are we going?"

"Just trying to get away from the crowd."

The aisle they headed down was lined with carny amusements: skee-ball, ring-the-bell, ring toss and dart games. They passed a shooting gallery, all hisses and pops and ringing bells. He marched past them all, putting a hundred people between them and the corner, but he didn't slow until a slight bend took it out of sight.

They paused in front of a game booth consisting of a pyramid of metal targets shaped likeold-fashioned milk bottles. The barker attending it grinned and leaned into the aisle, offering a softball. "Try your hand, Miss? Knock two down, win a prize, clear all three off the bench and take your pick."

Dan watched the big redhead look over the prize selection: the top shelf of the display held a big pink teddy bear that Caitlin plainly coveted. But her look turned doubtful when her gaze shifted to the three bottles. Dan knew that, although they were made of lead and much harder to knock over than they looked, an earnest throw by his super-powered girlfriend would probably send them and the ball flying through the wall of the tent - and anything or anyone on the other side.

"No, thanks," she said. "I'm not much good at this sort of thing." She glanced at her date.

Dan had played – and won – this game often, less for a prize from the top shelf than to score a smile from whatever lady friend he was with. But he didn't volunteer to throw for her. His and Kat'srelationship was beyond such innocent little challenges and tests, he felt; a far greater one was close at hand. He stepped away from the booth, and she followed.

She took his hand. "Daniel. Is it time to talk?"

He tried not to look in her eyes as he answered. Actually, he'd been avoiding her eyes all afternoon. "What do you mean?"

"Answering a question with a question? Is it really that bad?" She lifted their joined hands. "You haven't reached for my hand once all afternoon. When I take yours, it's like gripping a flipper. You've hardly spoken, and you haven't teased or cracked a single joke. It's like you wish you were somewhere else."

"Sorry. Been thinking."

"I should hope. Can't you share it with me?"

He took a deep breath. "I have to," he said. "But I don't want to." He slipped his hand free. "You know they've been filling our heads with crap about Genactives. Campfire stories about what you've done, and what you might be capable of, and how little control you really have over your powers. They drop dark hints about your sanity."

She gazed out over the aisle, avoiding his eyes. "And there's just enough in their arguments that you know to be true … to make you wonder if maybe the lies aren't really as big as we say they are."

"Kat." He touched her forearm, and experienced a little tingle at the feel of her skin under his fingertips, a sensation he hadn't noticed when she'd gripped his hand a moment earlier; he wondered what that meant. "I know which side I'm on."

"Then what kind of doubts _are_ you having?"

He frowned. This wasn't how he'd meant to start; how did they get off on this track? "I'm just trying to say that a lot of the people after you are good men who think they're doing the right thing."

She touched his hand, but didn't grasp it. "They're your friends. You think they'd join our side if you could make them understand, make them believe. But you know you can't."

He kept silent for a time, marshaling his thoughts; she walked beside, just as silent, waiting. He accepted that breaking it off with Kat was necessary to their joint survival, even more so than for his father and Annie. But Dan's honor and conscience demanded a full account of his behavior leading up to that decision. He came to realize that he was looking for someplace quiet and private to deliver his confession, in case things got... out of hand.

_Not sure of her reaction? How would any girl take hearing her boyfriend confess that he slept with another woman?_

_But Caitlin Fairchild isn't 'any girl', is she? And when have you felt sure of her about anything, really?_

A witness at Chula Vista had quoted one of the Thirteens who'd said that being stressed or threatened 'made them crazy', claiming it was a side effect. Suddenly Dan realized why he'd been thinking of those campfire stories. And why he'd slipped his Lethe dispenser into his pocket before he'd gone out the door.

If what Dan had to say might drive Caitlin into a violent impulse, or just a nuclear tantrum, even, best to do it away from casual witnesses.

Their feet had taken them to the back of the main building, a school-sized structure two stories tall. A long row of concession tents was backed up almost against it, forming a narrow alley between the firehouse's windowless block wall and the rear walls of the tents. He glanced down it: dim and shadowy, the only illumination provided by the softly glowing nylon of the tent backs. At the far end, the tents were dark, and he could barely make out a tall board fence closing off the space, creating a cul-de-sac, empty and untraveled. "Come this way."

They stepped along carefully. The wall was equipped with faucets and electrical outlets at regular intervals; hoses and heavy power cords crossed the space and disappeared under the backs of the tents. They could hear a cacophony of voices on the other side of the fabric walls, so many overlapping conversations it was impossible to make out more than an occasional word. They passed beyond, into the relative dark and quiet near the board fence. There were small gaps between the tents here, but nothing but darkness lay beyond them; he guessed that these tents were being used as a storage area for the businesses they'd passed. This place seemed as quiet and private as they were likely to get.

He turned, and she was right behind him, close enough to touch. Her eyes, for once, were dark, her gaze intent on him. Her lips parted, and he suddenly realized she was waiting to be kissed. His hands rose to reach for her, but he got control and brought them back down to his sides. "I didn't bring you here for that. I'm sorry."

She stepped back and put her shoulders and palms against the wall. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

He stared at her, heart aching. _She has such beautiful eyes. _And… had her jeans always been that snug? And her unbuttoned jacket, the way it molded itself over her figure, its bottom hem falling well forward of her flat belly… He pulled his eyes off her and focused on the wall beside her head, beside that gorgeous copper hair shining even in this dim light...

_Get a grip, Grissom. See this through. _"There was a guy in Iraq. A friend. We worked together. He probably saved my life. He counted on me to protect his identity, to keep his family safe. I couldn't do it. I don't know what else I could have done, but what I did wasn't enough. He paid a terrible price for trusting me." He took a deep breath. "That's not gonna happen again. If I see some way to put you farther from danger, Caitlin, I've got to do it, whatever it takes. Even if…I mean, whatever else happens between us..."

"What do you mean, 'whatever else happens'?" She stared at him strangely.

"Caitlin, we've almost been caught so many times already. Getting spotted at the club was only the first. I can't…" The words dried up in his mouth. Suddenly, there was nothing strange about her looks at all, except that she was too perfect to be real. And then, there was absolutely nothing strange about her perfection. She was more beautiful than a desert sunrise, her very presence illuminating the little alley and making it a place of magic.

"Dan. You're scaring me." Her words made no sense, but her voice was music, her eyes gems unrivaled by anything ever freed from the earth or shining down from the night sky. He could track her breathing by the rise and fall of her breasts under the denim jacket, and his breathing shifted to match hers. _What a fool I was, to think I could ever leave you._

His arms were around her, one hand at her waist and the other under her jacket between her shoulder blades, feeling her body heat through a thin layer of cotton fabric. He pulled her close, his mouth searching for hers. She gave a little gasp that heated his blood, and turned her head aside. His lips found her cheek, brushed her earlobe, then slid down the line of her jaw and kissed her neck, his hunger growing. Her hair brushed across his face, soft as a cloud. He pulled her to him even harder, feeling the tautness of her body against him, firm yet yielding breasts spreading against his chest. He could feel her breathing and heartbeat quicken. His nose filled with half a dozen scents, all wondrously feminine and delicious.

He heard her call his name, then again, more urgently; the sound of it ignited his ardor like gasoline thrown on a campfire. The hand at the small of her back slid into the waistband of her jeans, gathered the material of her shirt between thumb and forefinger, and pulled it out of her pants. _God, I want you so much._

Her palms were flat on his sternum. He thrilled at her touch until he realized she was pushing him away. He resisted for a moment, then, heartbroken, loosened his grip. But he still couldn't bring himself to let go until her longer reach separated them.

"Caitlin, don't leave me." His hands sought hers, but she evaded him and stepped back.

"I have to. Just for a minute. I'll be right back." She hurried down the little lane, almost jogging. She reached the opening, turned left, and disappeared, taking all the light and color in the world with her.

He leaned against the block wall, feeling spent. Gradually his senses returned, and he flushed with embarrassment. He wiped at his hot forehead. _This is __so__ not going to work._

Then his damp skin turned cold. _How many of those crazy thoughts were making their way past my lips?_

He looked up at the alley's mouth, and his blood froze. Jared stood there, staring in the direction Caitlin had gone. The man glanced down the alley, saw him, and started towards him, a hand over his jacket pocket.

Dan stood unsteadily, and his hand slipped into his trouser pocket. _Are we really about to play High Noon with Lethe guns?_

Jared stopped just out of range. "Dan? You okay? I mean, did she…"

_Did she turn you? _Dan huffed weakly and brought his hand out empty. "Relax, partner. I know what side I'm on. You saw her?"

"Just a glimpse before she disappeared. It's really her, right? Not the double." The ex-Marine drew closer. "Damn, man. You look like Watts after that frickin collar demo. What did she do?"

He could still smell her perfume, unless that was just his runaway imagination. He touched his fingertips to his chest. He could feel her hand there, just under his heart. And her breasts pressing against his pecs, and, under the fingers of his right hand, the warm smooth skin just above her ass as he'd pulled her shirt out…"Just touched me."

"How long you been following her? Is she alone?"

Dan's legs felt wobbly and weak, as if his blood pressure had taken a nosedive. "I've been with her since she walked through the gate. She's not with anybody else."

Jared looked around the dark little cul-de-sac, his thought plain: _how did she lure you into such an obvious ambush spot?_

"Came through there," Dan said, indicating the dark gap between the tents. "Should have seen it, I guess, but …" He shrugged. "I think she was already working me."

Jared said gravely, "Like Nicole."

"Not nearly as strong. Shorter range. But yeah."

"Any idea where she went?"

"_I'll be right back."_ She'd probably gone no farther than the nearest restrooms, he thought. Just to splash a little cold water on her face and compose herself, so that she could face her boyfriend without turning him into a sex maniac. He thought about her hands pushing him away. Had he really loosened his grip, or had she forced them apart? If not for her Gen-boosted strength, would he have...

Jared patted Dan's cheek, hard, almost a slap. "Dan. Get your head in the game, man. Where did she go?"

Dan slapped the heel of his hand to his forehead. _Think, damn it. She'll be back here any minute. _Protective reflex made him move to stand between Jared and the alley's mouth. "Uh, yeah. Probably headed out to the lot for her car. I mean, she ambushed a tail. I'd want to get the hell out of Dodge, if it was me."

"What's she driving?"

"A bl-" He blinked. "Blue Celica."

The other man scoffed. "She must steer with her knees then. Dan, you got a Lethe pen?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Me too. I think you better leave yours in your pocket. You still look pretty shaky." Jared saw something over Dan's shoulder and his eyes widened. He stuck his hand in his pocket and started forward. "There she-"

Just behind him, a man-shape sprang from the shadows between the tents and grasped Jared's wrist before his hand left his pocket. A big hand appeared from under his opposite arm and wound around to grasp the back of his head. His chin dropped to his chest and he started making choking noises just as Dan reached into his own pocket.

"Don't." Lynch, the Ace of Spades, pressed Jared's head down harder, cutting off his air; Dan could almost hear the vertebrae creak. The man's other hand now held Jared's Lethe dispenser, which Lynch pressed against the agent's neck. Dan slowly removed his hand from his pocket.

"This might be a good time to review the warning the little blonde gave you at Westminster," the Man in Black said. "The one about your team going out to collect one of my kids and never being heard from again. This little ambush was a demonstration, just to show you how easy it would be. Don't count on another." Dan had just enough time to realize the end of the weapon was now facing him before blackness claimed him.

-0-

Caitlin reached her boyfriend too late to spare his knees, but just in time to keep his head from smacking the asphalt. Mr. Lynch eased Jared's limp form to the ground. He said, "Not how I wanted to meet your new man, Caitlin. You weren't expecting this one, I take it." It wasn't quite a question, and something about his posture told Caitlin that a wrong or unconvincing answer would be very bad for her beau.

"I'm sure Daniel wasn't either, Mr. Lynch. But he told me the leader of our pickup team still thinks I'm in town. Dan's not the only one who comes this way on the weekends, and she gave orders to them to keep an eye out."

He harrumphed. "Well, empty their pockets, anyway. Take their keys, ID, everything. Just for the inconvenience factor. You can give Dan's back later." He began to search Jared, leaving Dan to her.

Caitlin knelt over her boyfriend, and paused to regard his sleeping features, so handsome yet unlike Drew's even in repose. She brushed at a lock of hair that was just long enough to touch his ear. With his embrace very fresh in her memory, she tried to imagine waking beside him: feeling him stir, seeing him open his eyes sleepily, the feel of his arms as he put them around her and drew them together, skin to skin. She felt a touch of heat in her ears. Then her mind took a strange twist. She imagined herself blonde, a foot shorter, and a great deal more uninhibited. She blushed harder.

_Quit being such a ninny_, she told herself, and got to work. She went through his pants pockets, very conscious of the feel of his glutes and thighs against her fingertips as she removed his wallet and felt among the coins and keys. In the left front pocket, she found a box the size of a small pen case. She pulled it out and snapped it open to reveal a Lethe dispenser, fully charged. _Why on earth is he carrying this thing around on a date? Mugger protection, maybe? Making sure what happened at Beliz Park doesn't repeat?_

It occurred to her that it might do Dan's cover some good for Jared to wake in an hour and find him still unconscious. _Just one more dose._ She placed her finger on the syringe's activator stud and brought the business end to the sleeping man's neck.


	16. All's Well

"_NO!_" John Lynch's palm slapped into her wrist and his fingers clamped around as he forced her hand away.

Caitlin's awareness shrank to include only Mr. Lynch's hand tight around her wrist and his scarred features. She saw his alarm change to watchfulness, searching her face. Understanding came, in bits of puzzling memory that had tickled at her mind just short of true suspicion.

The gas station in New Mexico: Julius Gierling's unsubtle maneuvering to get her fingerprints on the Lethe syringe after he put a second dose in his partner.

The hilltop in Oklahoma: Mr. Lynch examining Gierling in the car, then, as she approached, hurriedly locking the vehicle up with the keys inside and abruptly leading her away.

The warehouse complex in Chula Vista: the angry Keeper calling after her. _You're a cold bitch, Fairchild. I've seen your handiwork. How did it feel, when you tapped him the tenth time?_

And finally, the park in Escondido, and Dan's cautious words: _Julius Gierling is dead. I'm not sure how. There are stories about the two of you._

When she felt steady enough, she asked, "How long will they be out?"

Mr. Lynch let go of her wrist. "Six or eight hours. Closer to six. They 're big boys. Someone will find them both before then, likely." He slipped between the dark tents. "Come on."

When they returned to the car, Mr. Lynch took the wheel. They traveled in silence for ten miles before Kat said to the windshield, "He was a despicable man. I was almost relieved to hear he was dead. But if I'd known, I wouldn't have done it."

"I know." Mr. Lynch checked his mirrors with exaggerated care. "He was killed by his own lie. Not your fault."

"But it was my doing. I remember the look on his face just before I pressed the plunger. I _told_ him I was going to empty it. He tried to tell me, but he couldn't, couldn't get it out fast enough…"

Lynch pulled the car into the next driveway, an entrance to an apartment complex. He wheeled into the first open slot and parked. He reached for her tentatively, as if for something fragile and precious he was afraid of breaking, and gently pulled her fists down from her mouth. It was the final blow to her composure, and she fell into his arms.

A short time later, he said softly, "I thought my shirt would be soaked by now. It's all right, Caitlin. Cry if you need to."

"No,"she said into his neck, "this is all I need right now. I'm just glad you were here." A little later, she said, "I suppose you think I'm carrying on like a child, after all the things you've done."

"No." His palm moved along her shoulder in a tiny caress. "I've never done anything like this."

"How ... I mean…"

"I've killed people, Caitlin, plenty. Guilty and innocent alike; 'collateral damage' was a term coined by my generation, after all. I've killed by accident, and sent people to their deaths. And… good people have given their lives for me. But I've been trained since boyhood to face those things squarely. I can't imagine what it must be like to… come up against something like this without preparation."

"Is that why you didn't tell me?"

"Honestly? Cowardice, I suppose. I hoped you'd never find out."

"Who else knows? Anna?"

"I never told her. And if she figured it out, she never told me. None of the others knows."

"I'm pretty sure Dixie knew."

"I don't think that automatically means Anna knows. At least, that's what she told me."

"Daniel knows. IO has its own version of the story, I think."

"They have their own version of every story." His voice was deep and soothing. His grip on her waist and shoulders tightened a tiny bit. His cheek brushed her ear, and her breath shortened. "Caitlin, I-"

"Hey!" A man and woman were passing by on the walk in front of them. The woman went on good-naturedly, "Take it inside," and walked on. Her companion slowed to a stop, his eyes lingering on Kat.

She withdrew to her side of the car. "We should go."

"I don't think you're finished dealing with this."

"Probably not." She saw that the woman who'd spoken had stopped a few steps down the walk when she'd noticed she was alone; her companion was still standing at the car and staring at Caitlin through the windshield. The man leaned towards the passenger door, and the woman hurried towards him, frowning. "But I'm okay for now. Let's just get out of here."

They pulled back onto the street before she realized. "You're immune. Like Bobby."

"Eh?"

"I was so upset I was shaking, and all you wanted to do was comfort me. Even when you touched me. My allure doesn't work on you."

"Not the allure you got from Gen-factor." He changed lanes and turned onto a four-lane road headed south. "But you never needed that to make a man lose his heart to you."

-0-

Instead of looking in the kitchen for Anna when he arrived home, as was his usual habit, John Lynch went straight to his bedroom, shedding clothing before the door snicked shut. He was lathering up in the shower with the water as hot as he could stand when the door slid aside to reveal his wife, fully dressed.

"You left a perfume trail all the way to the shower door, husband." Anna presented the black shirt he'd discarded on the floor, turning the collar and shoulder to show him the smudges of coral lip gloss. "If I was a jealous woman, John Lynch, I might be feeling very threatened right now. Caitlin's?"

"Yes."

She dropped the shirt and put a hand on his soapy chest. "Love, what is it? Is she all right?"

-0-

Anna tapped softly on Caitlin's door. "Hon? Are you asleep?" She opened the door a crack, just enough to see the bed and the big redhead, fully clothed, curled up atop her bedcovers with her back to the door. Biometrics indicated a conscious but depressed state consistent with the beginning stages of sleep. Anna was easing the door shut again when the girl spoke.

"I can't cry. Doesn't that seem strange?" Caitlin rolled over and removed the pink teddy bear from under her chin. "I keep thinking of the look on his face the instant before I pressed the stud. The sheer terror."

Anna entered and shut the door behind her. "Well, Julius Gierling had plenty of reason to fear the afterlife."

"That man at Chula Vista looked at me like I was a monster. Even Daniel got wary-looking when he mentioned Julius at the park."

Anna sat next to the girl and stroked her hair. "Darling, you know you're not like that. Don't you?"

"Anna, I was enjoying it. Making him squirm. That's why I can't…"

Anna gave a tiny sigh. "I don't know if I'm the person to be talking to you about this. I've done things, big and small, that I've felt badly about later. And I've done _terrible_ things that I don't feel badly about at all." She brushed a thumb across Caitlin's cheek. "You know I love people. But there are some the world is better off without. They don't deserve compassion, and remorse is wasted on them. I think, if I'd been sitting beside him in that car, seeing the lie in his eyes as he smiled at me, knowing what he'd done and what he planned … I'd have wanted him to suffer more."

The big girl was silent for a few moments more, then: "I've been such a fool."

"No, darling. You just never see the worst in people."

"Not about Julius. About Daniel. He was going to break up with me tonight, I think. My allure stopped him." She stared up at the ceiling. "I didn't know about allure when I was with Julius. I thought he was just being a letch. I was angry with him for that. It made it easier to play him, to do what I did. But did he even have a choice? What if-"

"No." Anna brushed the girl's copper hair off her forehead. "Don't give allure too much credit for his actions. I'm sure he'd have wanted you anyway. And he was still going to betray you in the end, wasn't he? Allure or no allure, your first estimate of him was the right one."

"My first estimate of Daniel was, 'nice, but all wrong for me'. That was even before I found out who he worked for. For a genius, I've been showing a stunning lack of sense lately. I've been putting us all at risk chasing a fantasy."

Instead of protesting, Anna said, "Everyone deserves a chance to follow a dream. Do you think any of us would denyyou?" She patted the girl's shoulder. "This will work out. Maybe not the way you hope or expect, but it will."

Sunday Oct 15  
Oceanside California

Daniel woke in darkness, head pounding, to the smells of asphalt and French fries, both odors equally nauseating. He lay on his side with the side of his head grinding into the pavement as he stirred. The only sound was a soft snore close by. They were still in the alley, he decided, though he couldn't see a thing.

While he waited for his eyes to adjust – why didn't you wake with fully-developed night vision after hours with your eyes closed? He rolled slowly to his hands and knees, fighting dizziness and nausea. Hanging his head seemed to help. Switching his forward weight to one hand, he reached back carefully for his cell phone, but the pocket was flat and empty. He explored further, and learned that all his pockets had been cleaned out.

The snoring nearby ended with a snort, followed by a series of coughs.

Dan said, "Jared?" His mouth felt coated with zinc, a strange greasy-metallic presence in his throat and on his tongue. After a moment, he called again. "Hey. Say something."

"Twelve-beer hangover." Dan heard a shoe scrape. "Can't see shit. Is it dark, or am I blind?"

"We've been out awhile. I think they closed the place up on us."

Jared grunted. "Woke up on my side."

"Me too. Guess they were worried we might choke on our own puke while we slept."

"Pretty considerate."

"Well, it would have ruined the message, don't you think?" He felt a hose under his hand. The alley was only six feet wide; the back of the building had been on his right when he'd gone down. Assuming he'd fallen face-first…. He followed the line on hands and knees to the wall, then sat with his back to the blocks and his head between his drawn-up knees. "Got a phone?"

A pause. "Got nothing, man. They even took my change."

"Same. I'm at the wall. Can you walk?"

"I can crawl."

While Jared shuffled toward him, Dan looked up at the sky above him, and thought he discerned a faint glow: light pollution from LA, maybe just dawn. After a moment, his neck and eyeballs were too sore to hold the position. He dropped his head again just as he heard a soft thud against the wall beside him.

Jared said, "_Shit_. They got our Lethe pens."

"I'm just glad yours is only missing two doses."

"Yeah, there's that."

Dan could see his legs stretched out on the pavement in front of him, and the wall of the tent beyond. If he turned his head, he thought, he would probably be able to make out Jared beside him as well, but he didn't feel up to the effort just yet**. **

He said, "I guess we need to think about our next move. Once we _can_ move, that is." Was there some way to stall? He'd never convince Jared not to report the incident, but the longer the delay, the more time the 'ambushers' would have to 'get away', and the less cost-effective a renewed manhunt would seem to the higher-ups. _If we call this in too soon, the manhunt may start all over again, and Kat and her 'family' will have to go back into hiding. They may even have to relocate, and I may never see her again._

_Well, that would settle things nicely, wouldn't it?_ A dark little voice whispered. _She'd think you were doing it all for her, and never have to know her boyfriend's a two-timing asshole._

He was ashamed by the moment of relief he felt at that prospect.

He went on, "I suppose there's a phone in the fire station, but I'm none too steady on my feet. I'm inclined to wait till I can walk before I-"

"Hold on, Dan."

"Eh?"

"I think we ought to talk this over before we go rushing off to call Central." Jared went on quickly, "It's not because I'm embarrassed to tell everybody we got owned. I'm just thinking it's not a good idea. Just hear me out, okay?"

"Okay," Dan said, mystified. "Sure."

"Look, I know how bad you want to bring these guys down. Wasn't I at the firing range when you turned down Colby's offer? If I thought there was a chance they were still anywhere around, I'd be crawling to that fire station. But they didn't set this up without making sure they'd be halfway across the country by the time we woke up. Right?"

"I suppose not," Dan said reluctantly. "_I_ wouldn't."

"I know what you're thinking. You'd feel like the biggest asshole in the world, if some more of our guys get taken down by the Lynch Mob because we didn't put the word out in time. But you heard what Lynch said. This was a warning. You give somebody a warning, it's wasted unless you step back and see what he does with it."

"So… what are you suggesting?"

"Ferris sent us out here, not Central," Jared said. "I think we should report this to her when we get back. It won't make any difference to the hunt, but … Danny, you like Ferris?"

"Seems okay. I've had worse bosses."

"I've had _lots_ worse."

"Okay, so have I. What's your point?"

"The manhunt was officially over a week ago. Ferris stepped over the line to tell us to keep looking. She was right, but I doubt that's gonna do any good if we call from a fire station in Oceanside and tell Central we walked into a trap. I haven't been with the Shop long, but it's easy to see the playing field's not level for women, career-wise. She can't afford a black mark on her record. And I've got a feeling the brass don't encourage initiative. Especially if it doesn't pay off."

"Or backfires," Dan said. He turned his head carefully. Jared's face was dim in the gloom, but Dan could make out the worry marking it. "Okay. We'll do it your way, partner." He gave the ex-Marine a weary smile. "Guess one of us is thinking straight, anyway."

Escondido

The front door to the senior Grissom's house opened ten seconds after Caitlin rung the bell. Daniel's father stood at the open door, regarding her carefully. "Danny's not here, Kat."

"I know." She'd driven past Daniel's house first, to make sure, and seen his beater in the driveway. _Guess he had a spare key._ "I just need to drop something off for him." She proffered a paper sandwich bag containing everything she and Mr. Lynch had taken from the two men's pockets, including both Lethe dispensers. "He'll want it before he leaves for Boulder, I'm sure."

He studied her a moment more. Instead of taking the bag, he opened the door further and stepped aside. "The phone's in the kitchen. He's on it right now. I'm sure he wants to talk to you."

Boulder

Weyland Moore was pleasantly surprised by what he found in the 'com shack' on Sunday afternoon. He'd never worked the afternoon-evening shift before, but he and Roger had been called in early to fill vacation openings for the next week. He had thought he'd be swamped with calls to monitor in the hours immediately after the normal working day. But it seemed the Shop was a pretty quiet place, phone-call-wise, on Sundays. No doubt it would be a different story tomorrow, but today, with two other agents sharing the load, he and Rog had it nearly as easy as on the graveyard shift.

During a period of slack time, he got up, stretched, and made his way to Roger's workstation for a chat. But Roger seemed busy with something, typing at his keyboard with his eyes on his monitor. Weyland came up behind and studied the screen. "Rog. Are you setting up an outside intercept?"

"Couple, actually. Just Mayfair and Grissom. Thought it might be a good chance to see who our regulars talk to during daylight hours."

The listening post's equipment enabled its operators to tap into the cell phones and land lines of Shop personnel. Although its use was discretionary, in practice it was used almost entirely to investigate flagged individuals. Mayfair was a Research admin who sometimes made calls late at night from work to several different addresses in Boulder, just before going home; when he did, the conversations were always short and cryptic. Wey thought the guy was probably just ordering a hooker, but maybe not. "Why Grissom?"

Roger grinned as he finished setting up taps on five numbers. "What, you don't want to know what Kat and Marie sound like? And how he juggles them?"

Weyland scoffed. But he said, "Let me know if he gets on a line." He returned to his station.

In the next hour, Wey monitored three calls: all incoming from out-of town agents calling friends for a ride from the airport. The talk was mundane, the most interesting conversation from a man who'd seen a Patriots game over the weekend. He was just about to disconnect when a waving arm over the top of his low cubicle wall caught his attention.

Roger was tapping his headphones. "Grissom. Get on the line. You're not gonna _believe_ this."

Escondido/Boulder

Dinner was in the works in Andy's kitchen. On the center island lay the makings for a large salad. A chopping board and a heavy knife, both used, lay on the counter beside the sink. The room was warm from something heating in the oven. Andy must not be eating alone, she thought.

The phone lay beside its charging dock on the counter. Her hand hesitated over it for a second, then she picked it up and placed it to her ear. "Daniel?"

"_Kat. What are you doing there?_"

She swallowed. "I'm just dropping off your stuff. I'm not staying. I know you're eating with your dad."

"_Sorry about last night._" He sounded tired: aftereffects of the Lethe dose twenty hours before, or simple resignation? "_More than I can say._"

"Me too."

-0-

"Must have been a hell of a fight." Roger frowned. "Wait a minute. I thought Marie was the one who came to the house."

"Switches them, maybe, weekends and weekdays." Weyland pressed the can tighter against his ear. "Not for much longer, I think. These two are saying goodbye."

-0-

"_There was a lot more I needed to say to you._"

She shook her head, rubbing her ear against the phone. "No. You don't need to give me a speech. I know what you wanted to say. I guess… I've kind of been waiting for this."

"_I know it must seem cold, doing it like this. Cowardly. But I can't… if we were face to face…_"

"I understand. I do." _It's not cowardice. He knows what would happen if I went on a jag in a room with him. He'd try to kiss my tears away. And pull off my clothes._ "It's the only way."

-0-

"He's _dumping_ her? Over the _phone_?"

"Yuh. What an asshole."

-0-

"_It's not just about risks. Not even just about us. Drew needs a stable environment, a real home."_ He paused. "_Adrienne and I… we've been talking."_

"Talking." She tried to keep her voice even.

An excruciating silence, then: "_She left Alan._"

Realization struck her like a hammer. _Of course she did. He'd have been in the way._

_How long has she been planning to go back to Daniel? Since the divorce? No, that doesn't make sense. Since she lost custody? Maybe. But definitely since our talk at Arena's._

_She told me I was perfect for him, but really, I was perfect for her. A girl who had no real chance with Daniel, who'd nevertheless keep him from getting involved with someone who'd press him harder for a commitment. A placeholder. A naïf who wouldn't recognize Adrienne as a threat, who wouldn't try to keep them separated. All that talk about 'taking it slow' and 'being sure'… because she knew sexual intimacy between us would seal the deal for Daniel, and lose her her chance. How could I have been so gullible? _

_Should I try to tell him?_ Her heart sank further. _No. I'm an ex-girlfriend now. He'd just shrug it off as jealousy or desperation. And besides…would it be the right thing to do?_

"_I like you. But I'd do anything for Drew."_

She found her voice. "That's good. Really. I'm sure… I'm sure Drew will be happier. I hope it works out for you."

The conversation wound down awkwardly, and after a few more minutes, they said their goodbyes. Caitlin disconnected, wondering if she'd ever hear from him again. She rather hoped not.

Andy was waiting in the living room. "Kat," he said, "is everything…" His voice faded away as he stared at her.

She shook her head and avoided his eyes, not knowing whether the man had lost his voice because her allure was up or if he'd just seen something in her face. She pulled her keys from her pocket and left without a word. On the way home, she gave extra attention to her driving, never exceeding the posted limit, signaling every turn and lane change, avoiding sharp braking, and keeping plenty of distance between her car and the ones ahead.

When she arrived home, she carefully backed the Charger into its bay, dead slow, and went straight up the back stairs to her room. With the door closed behind her, she sat on her bed, reached for a pillow, pressed it to her face, and sobbed into it. After a few minutes, she wound down, caught her breath, and wiped her face on the soggy pillowcase, smearing it with her makeup.

"I'm sorry, hon." Anna stood in the bedroom doorway.

_Of course she was listening. She can hear every heartbeat in the house._ Caitlin shrugged, feeling dull and disconnected. "We never had a chance, really." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Reality check. Just seeing each other was a life-threatening risk. We had just three dates, and they were all near-disasters. We were never going to settle down and raise a family, and that's what he's looking for." She stripped off the pillowcase to take to the laundry. "Like Adrienne said, his women have to fit a certain mold. Her chances were always better than mine; she had a choice, at least. She could give up stripping, but I can't quit being Gen."

"Oh." Anna entered and closed the door behind her, as she had the previous night. "I don't understand. The way he talked about her, how could he want her back? For Drew? That doesn't make any sense."

"No," Kat said softly, standing up. Her legs felt a little weak, but nothing compared to an hour's run on the beach. "For pride. She's unfinished business, Anna. Daniel likes to play it off the other way, but it was she who left him, remember. That dirty custody fight had nothing to do with Adrienne's parenting skills. He never worried about her bringing Drew up alone when he was overseas. Or when he re-upped, just about the time his little boy was walking and talking and reaching for his daddy."

She sat down at her computer and idly tapped a few keys. "Don't get me wrong. I know Daniel loves Drew. But denying Drew's mother any time with him unless Daniel was present and calling the shots… that had nothing to do with Drew's welfare, and everything to do with concluding the marriage on Daniel's terms." She browsed through the document drive and found something: a series of files, unfinished projects waiting for a spark of inspiration and a few hours' concentration to complete.

"I've got fresh cookies in the kitchen. Want me to bring you a plate?"

"No, thanks. Not hungry." She opened the first of the series and studied the titles.

"You. Not hungry."

"Okay, don't want to spoil my supper then."

"Okay." A pause. "So you'll be down to supper."

"Sure." She opened up a few files, one after another,and closed them again; none of them caught her interest. "Don't make a big announcement about this, okay? Just one of those things."

"Well," the little blonde said slowly, "maybe they'll make it this time, at least."

Kat shook her head. "Not in the cards. Not even in the deck." She dug deeper into those dratted half-finished files, trying to find something to hold her attention. "Adrienne's smart. She knows they're the same people who couldn't stay together before. Neither of them is going to change; a rapprochement would unravel faster than the marriage. She told me marrying him was a mistake she wouldn't make again. And I doubt she'll ever forget how Daniel took Drew away from her."

She found a research project that had lain fallow since she'd met Daniel, a folder full of interlinked spreadsheets that required a fully engaged mind to navigate. Her forgotten insight returned to her, and she felt a sense of relief. She began to fill cells with trial data, writing formulae and linking datasets. The tempo of her keyboarding increased.

Her own voice seemed to recede as mathematical relationships and physical concepts began to push recent events from the front of her mind. "But, like I said, she's smart. And she's a woman who knows what she wants, and she's very determined, and convincing a man she's everything he wants is what she does for a living. She'll move back into Daniel's house soon. She'll tear up the divorce papers, and he'll rescind the custody decree. She'll quit stripping and wear nice modest suits to her club. She might even hire a floor manager, if she can find a good one, and stay completely out of sight of the customers, just to quiet Daniel's jealous streak. She'll be an easygoing and supportive companion to her husband, a perfect mom for Drew, a lady and a chic professional woman in public, and a whore in the bedroom – everything Daniel could want in a wife. He'll be in heaven, and he'll fall over himself to make her happy. I bet she'll even charm Andy."

The clatter of the keys wound up nearly to a buzz; the vibrating keyboard slid forward until it came to rest against the base of the monitor.

"For about a year, maybe, until the club is a going concern that she can sell at a profit. Then Daniel's going to walk through his front door one night and find out he's the only one living in his house."

One year later  
La Jolla

Just short of the community's entrance gate, Rico McCall swung the security company's car over to the curb and spun the wheel, performing a neat U-turn perfected over a thousand repetitions. He headed back down the community's single road and surveyed the movie-lot perfection of its walks and lawns and mansions.

All of the properties were occupied except for one. He cruised by the empty lot he still thought of as 'the Lynch place', with its curbside mailbox still poking out of an island of untended flowers. His eyes took in the lighter green of the slight rise atop which the house had stood. The community association had filled in the hole and seeded the blasted earth, and still paid to have it mowed; property values, Rico supposed. Or maybe erosion control. The basement and pool had been filled mostly with sand, though, and when he walked the property on the way to the beach for a foot patrol, he couldn't help noticing how thin the new grass was compared to the lush turf nearer the street.

With his windows down, he drove on down the gently curving two-lane, scanning the big houses carefully, even though he seldom saw anything remotely suspicious. The doors and windows he could see from the street were closed, garage doors down per the association covenants; only domestic help ever parked on the street here, and he recognized every car. No residents were stirring; at this late-morning hour, they were either long gone or not up yet, depending on how they made their money. He saw no one working outside, since it wasn't the landscaping crew's usual day; there were no hobby gardeners in this neighborhood, not since Anne Devereaux's disappearance.

He reached the second lift-arm gate, the one that separated the three houses belonging to the _Mafiosi_ from the rest of the community's millionaires who, presumably, made their money by more legal means. He lifted a hand in greeting to the mook standing in the covered doorway of the house nearest the gate, and received a similar acknowledgment. He made another U-turn and headed back.

When he reached the empty lot, he decided, he'd leave the car for a foot patrol along the beach, a narrow strip of sand overlooked by the pools and decks of the wealthier clients' waterfront houses. He'd be more likely to see residents then, sunning themselves or otherwise at leisure. A few might even acknowledge his presence with a wave, though he doubted any of them knew his name. That sort of friendliness and courtesy was something else that had disappeared with the Lynch household.

Someone was standing on the sidewalk in front of the vacant lot, staring out at the sky and the barely-visible waterline: a slender girl in a light summer dress and a wide-brimmed sun hat. He watched the breeze flutter the brim of her hat, play with her shoulder-length brown hair, and lift the dress's knee-length hem enticingly for just a moment; then his professionalism reasserted. He didn't recognize the girl, so she wasn't a resident. Her skin was as dark as his own, but she was too well-dressed to be a domestic, even if she was here for a job interview. Perhaps she was just sightseeing, or interested in the property, he thought. But there was no car at the curb, so she must be on foot. A guest? He drew closer without turning on his light, intending to call to her when he got close enough. But just before that happened, she turned his way, and he stamped on the brakes, staring. "_Anne?_"

She held her purse in front of her with both hands. "Beg pardon?"

Her voice was too deep to belong to John Lynch's little housekeeper. Rico took a second look. The hair was different, of course, and this girl's eyes were hazel instead of blue. He couldn't tell her age, but she was wearing more makeup than he'd ever seen on the little blonde, and that made her look older. Her dress was far more feminine than the sturdy, sensible clothes Anne Devereaux had always worn. Her dark skin could be a tan, he supposed, but Anne had been unnaturally pale-skinned for a California girl, even though she'd spent plenty of time in the sun. And wasn't this girl's nose a little wider? He wasn't sure. "Um, I thought I recognized you. My mistake."

"I parked at the gate. Am I trespassing? I suppose I am." She gestured toward the open lot. "I just wanted to look at the water. I never saw the ocean before. My family's moving out here from Arizona, once my dad sells his business. He's a contractor. I'd love a house on the beach, but nobody can talk my father out of building his own, and he says there isn't a vacant beachfront lot from L. A. to the Mexican border. Guess he must not have been looking very hard."

_Well, she's just as chatty as Anne, anyway_,he thought. "He might still be right. This one's not for sale."

"Is the owner building a new house? I can see there used to be something here."

"No." He shook his head. "Nobody's building on it. There's been a legal battle over ownership. A couple different police agencies are claiming it as seized property, and now the city's got a tax lien. I'm sure they'll start building five minutes after somebody gets clear title."

"Well, that sounds like a story worth hearing." She held out a hand. "Sandy Gutierrez. Yeah, I know," she said, smiling. "Mom's white. I didn't get much of my looks from Dad."

He reached through the window to take her hand. "Rico McCall."

The smile widened. "Guess you know what I'm talking about."

He tilted his head toward the passenger seat. "Want to sit?"

She glanced back at the lot. "Taking me to the gate?"

"You said you wanted to hear the story."

She smiled and rounded the front of the car. For the next thirty minutes, Rico neglected his work for the first time in his career as he told the story of the former inhabitants of the vacant lot. The story was nonlinear and filled with anecdotes, and as he spoke, Rico was surprised at how much trivia he knew about them – and how much he missed them.

Sandy said, "Wow. So nobody really knows what happened. Or even who they were."

"I've heard about five different explanations. None of them really fits."

"You know, the way you talk about them, I think you liked them. But they're criminals."

"They broke some laws, that's for sure. But I think the big charges are all just a cover of some kind." He rested a forearm on the wheel. "Call me a conspiracy nut, but I think someone in the government was after them, and not because they were bad people."

"Hm." She glanced out the window and down the street, then at her wristwatch, an expensive-looking bracelet with a tiny clockface. It occurred to him that Anne had never worn a watch or jewelry of any kind, not even a ring. "Maybe I'm being vain, but I got a feeling you're thinking of asking me out. I'd give you more time to make up your mind, but I'm on a schedule. Got to turn in the rental and meet my dad at three."

"I don't get off until four. When are you coming back into town?"

"I don't know. It's not for sure we'll even be moving somewhere close. Can I call you? Or would that threaten your _machismo_?"

He smiled. "Believe me, having a pretty girl call me up for a date will do my rep _no_ harm. But will you really call?"

"Next time I'm in town. Count on it." She produced a cell phone and punched in his number as he dictated. He didn't ask for hers.

He drove her to the gate. A plain compact was parked twenty yards on the other side. She got out. "See you, Rico." But instead of walking around the gate, she rounded the front of the car to stand at the driver's window. His forearm was resting on the sill; she leaned in close, placing a hand on the sill close to his, and met his eyes. In a low voice, she said, "When I call, my number's not going to come up on your display."

Only one person he'd known had had a phone number like that. He placed his index finger over hers and tapped it twice. "See you around, Sandy."

She smiled, nodded, and turned away. "See you. But not around."

San Diego

Adrienne clutched her purse in both hands, nearly lifting it off the table. "Anna? Is that really you?"

The little brunette nodded and slid into the booth opposite the taller woman. "I figured there was a reason you wanted to meet in San Diego, so I didn't object. But I need to be extra cautious here."

"Thank you for seeing me."

"Adrienne," Anna said, "I've been looking _forward_ to seeing you." After a moment of silence, she went on, "Dan actually called looking for you, can you believe it?"

The woman studied Anna for a moment, then opened her purse, extracted a slip of paper, and slid it across the table's surface."I figured you wouldn't want a check."

Anna took the slip of paper from Adrienne's fingers and examined it. It contained all the information necessary to access an account at a large bank whose main office was just a few blocks away. A seven-figure balance was written at the bottom: the amount of Jack's loan to Adrienne plus five percent.

"I'll come with you, just so there are no snags. I know you said 'no interest', but things were different then." Adrienne's voice was brittle, but her chin was high. "Is it enough?"

Anna lifted her eyes from the paper. "The final break, I presume."

"I suppose you all hate me."

Anna shook her head. "No, actually. This is the best way it could have ended for her. She sees that now. She even understands your motive. She couldn't hate you for jumping on a chance to get your child back. You could even be friends again, if you want." She paused. "No, not really. Caitlin doesn't hold grudges, but I doubt you could ever win back her trust." She waved the slip gently. "Just one thing. Did you plan it from the beginning?"

Something about the little den mother's posture told Adrienne that something important hinged on her answer. She moved her head a tiny bit from side to side. "No. I really thought they had a chance, at first. But, once I saw how big a fence they were climbing just to see each other, I figured it was just a matter of time, and not much time either."

"Which provided you a narrow window of opportunity. So you worked fast." Anna tore the slip in half, then put the pieces together and tore them again. She dropped the fragments next to Adrienne's hand.

The woman stared down at the torn-up paper. "That's … a lot of anger. What will Jack say when he finds out you threw away over a million dollars?"

"Jack will never miss it. He probably forgot he ever gave it to you. And you're going to need it. I'm sure the overhead for your new club in Toronto will be a lot higher. And Drew deserves the best school you can put him in. He has his father's heart, and his mother's smarts." Anna said, gently, "I'm not angry, Adrienne. That money was never meant to be paid back."

"Anna-"

"We called it a loan, but it wasn't really. It was payment. And you were worth every penny."

"What are you …" Her eyes widened. "I couldn't have done it without the money. I had to be able to quit stripping, or I'd have never lured him away."

Anna nodded.

"You _paid_ me to steal him back." A moment later Adrienne said, "How long were _you_ planning this?"

"I was looking for a way to break them up while I was talking her into dating him."

"I don't-"

"Establishing a relationship between them was useful. Very. But they couldn't stay together. Even if they overcame their differences – which they wouldn't – it was too dangerous. Once he was set up as a contact and firmly in our camp, the sooner the romance ended the better - for both of them." She offered the woman a small smile. "I just had to make sure the breakup left Caitlin blameless, and Dan feeling guilty and obligated."

"My God. I thought I was a scheming bitch."

"We both are. And for the same reason. The kids come first." She slid out of the seat and stood. "Goodbye, Adrienne, and good luck. I don't know if Kat will ever see you again, but I may. You're my kind of people. Give Drew a kiss for me."


End file.
